


to think that we could stay the same

by cerago



Series: hgau [2]
Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Hunger Games AU, it's just the same fic but karolina-centric and also darker lmao, y'all i did it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:48:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21608563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerago/pseuds/cerago
Summary: Nico,the Capitol representative had called her. She’s small and skinny, sure, not your typical victor material, but there’s something about her expression that makes Karolina think there’s more to her than meets the eye. And it doesn’t hurt that with her dark hair and smooth skin and sharp jawline, she’s maybe the most beautiful girl Karolina has ever seen.(or: karolina wins the hunger games, but that's before the beginning)
Relationships: Karolina Dean/Nico Minoru
Series: hgau [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557328
Comments: 53
Kudos: 321





	1. we were built to fall apart

**Author's Note:**

> anyway I wrote a karolina-pov companion to my [original hgau](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16998777?view_full_work=true) that's both longer and significantly more melodramatic than the first one!! can probably be read as a standalone since it follows basically the exact same time frame, but I spend less time on the plot so it might be less confusing to read the other one first.
> 
> title is from two slow dancers by mitski

**_seventy-one_ **

Karolina Dean first sees Nico Minoru on the worst day of Nico’s life.

It’s Reaping Day, Karolina’s fourth since she made history at age fourteen: the youngest ever Hunger Games victor. Now she’s a mentor, trying each year with increasing desperation to keep one of District 4’s tributes alive long enough to claim their own victory. 

(She hasn’t succeeded yet.)

On the way to the Capitol with this year’s tributes, she watches the reaping for the other districts. When the broadcast gets to the competitors from District 3 her boy for the year, Topher, scoffs.

“Well, at least we know one district that won’t be any competition.”

But Karolina can’t look away from the girl’s face— _Nico_ , the Capitol representative had called her. She’s small and skinny, sure, not your typical victor material, but there’s something about her expression that makes Karolina think there’s more to her than meets the eye.

(And it doesn’t hurt that with her dark hair and smooth skin and sharp jawline, she’s maybe the most beautiful girl Karolina has ever seen.)

During the Games, even as Karolina is focused on her own tributes, she keeps an eye on Nico, and can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief every night that she’s still alive. At the end of the competition it’s down to Nico and Topher, and Karolina would be lying if she claimed there wasn’t at least part of her hoping for Nico to come out on top. Topher is bloodthirsty and cruel — in other words, the perfect career tribute — and she doesn’t know Nico, but there’s something about her that Karolina is drawn to in a way she’s never felt about _any_ tribute, let alone one from another district.

(She thinks back to Nico’s interview, the night before the Games started. Most of the questions had been centered around how her approach would differ from that of her sister who had been killed in the Games several years earlier, and Nico’s answers had been clipped almost to the point of rudeness. 

Watching her, Karolina had felt a surge of admiration. She herself had never been anything but absolutely fake-delighted to be talking to Caesar Flickerman. Even then, when all twenty-four tributes had still been alive and the field had been wide open, Karolina had sort of hoped hoped Nico would win.)

She looks away from the broadcast when Nico, her face bloody and her limbs shaking, drives a spear through Topher’s chest.

She tries to look as though she’s upset by the outcome.

==

**_seventy-two_ **

It’s nearly a year before Karolina says a word to Nico.

She sees her in person long before that— Nico passes through District 4 on her victory tour, but there are so many victors in 4 that Karolina never gets close enough in the few hours that Nico is there to interact with her. But even from a distance she can see how uncomfortable Nico is, how awkwardly she behaves under the spotlight.

She sees her again months later, in the two weeks the tributes are at the Capitol, before the Games begin. Nico is a mentor now, but she doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing just yet; at any rate, she seems preoccupied enough with District 3’s tributes that she doesn’t notice Karolina staring at her.

(They pass each other once in the hallway, the day the tributes are scored. It’s in district order, so Nico is escorting her second tribute away from the evaluation room when Karolina brings in her first — Cesar, her favorite of the two — and she’s so preoccupied with giving him a last-minute pep talk that she doesn’t notice Nico until she’s right in front of her. Nico doesn’t even spare Karolina a glance, deep in conversation with her tribute, but Karolina catches the faint scent of jasmine as she passes, and she’s struck with the insane urge to call out to Nico before she shoves it down.

“You okay?” Cesar asks, and Karolina realizes that her pep talk has trailed off.

“Yeah,” Karolina says, forcing a smile as they reach the evaluation room. “Good luck.”)

So Karolina doesn’t get a chance to talk to Nico before the Games. She doesn’t know what she’d even say.

Once the Games start, she’s too busy to think about Nico much. With every year that passes without another victory for District 4, Karolina’s mom gets more and more disapproving. And it’s not like it’s even really Karolina’s fault. She isn’t the district’s only mentor. District 4 has ten other victors, all of whom have more experience, both with coaching tributes and navigating the Capitol’s bureaucracy.

But every year she’s the one that’s blamed, just because her mother, Leslie Dean, happens to be the mayor.

So this year, she works harder than ever to secure sponsors for their tributes. Not that it even matters, since one of them dies even earlier than usual. District 4’s tributes are always strong and prepared for the arena and normally stay alive until the end of the first week at least, but this one doesn’t even make it to the end of day four.

To make matters worse, it’s Cesar. He didn’t stand much of a chance; he was too kind, trying not to kill the girl from 3 when his so-called ally from 2 shot the both of them.

That night, Karolina gets an angry call from her mom.

_“Why didn’t you tell him not to hesitate?”_

“Because he could really hear me, miles away in the arena,” Karolina retorts. Normally she does her best to be non-confrontational, but there’s something different about today that makes her want to push back.

_“What were you doing the week before it started, then? Weren’t you supposed to train him to show no mercy?”_

“Isn’t that what your school is for?” Karolina snaps, and hangs up before her mom can respond.

She’s going to pay for that later, she knows. If not in the next few days, then certainly when she gets home and has to live under her mom’s thumb until it’s time for the next Games. But _god_ if it didn’t feel good in the moment. After she ends the call she just sits for a minute, motionless and seething in front of the video monitor, and then abruptly she turns and heads for the elevator.

Over the past few years she’s discovered that the rooftop is always open, and — even better — nearly always deserted.

She doesn’t normally go up, but whenever everything gets too overwhelming it’s the one place in the Capitol she can go to escape, to look out over the shining lights of the city and wish she were anywhere else.

Tonight when she steps out of the elevator and into the crisp night air, she’s so caught up in her own thoughts that it’s a second before she realizes she’s not alone.

There’s a small figure sitting at the end of the roof. They’re facing away and haven’t seen her yet, and Karolina briefly considers retreating back downstairs before they notice her.

She really wants to be alone, tonight.

But then the figure turns enough for Karolina to catch a glimpse of their face, and Karolina recognizes Nico Minoru. For once the air of bored antagonism she usually exudes is absent, and Karolina realizes with a pang that the girl from 3 that died today is the first tribute Nico has ever lost.

Her immediate impulse is to comfort her, but she hesitates. Quite apart from wanting to be alone, Karolina knows that it’s objectively better to keep her distance. Fraternization between districts isn’t discouraged, exactly, but it’s not common, and getting close to Nico could reflect badly on both their districts.

But Nico’s clearly been crying, tear tracks still glistening on her cheeks, and it’s only one night, after all. What harm could it do?

In a split second, Karolina makes the most important decision of her life.

She walks across the roof to sit next to Nico. Nico doesn’t greet her, but she also doesn’t move away; in fact, she doesn’t acknowledge Karolina’s presence at all. They sit side by side in silence for several long minutes, Karolina uncomfortably aware of Nico at her side.

“It never really gets easier,” Karolina finally says.

Nico turns to look at her for the first time. Even disheveled as she is, in sweatpants with red eyes and smudged makeup, she’s beautiful, and Karolina feels a twinge of _something,_ but she shoves it to the side. Right now Nico needs someone sympathetic who can understand what she’s going through.

(Karolina remembers her own first year, fresh off her own victory and convinced it would be easy to guide one of her tributes through the same.

She’d forgotten that every other mentor also knew how to win.)

==

She goes back to the roof the next night half expecting Nico not to be there, but she turns up after a few minutes as though they had a standing appointment. And she’s there again the night after that, and every night following.

The more time they spend in each other’s company, the more Karolina starts to reconcile the aloof, untouchable victor she’s seen on television with the girl sitting next to her right now, drinking vodka to dull the pain of her second tribute’s death.

Nico is only a year younger than her, but sometimes it feels like more. Because Karolina is _used_ to this, barely nineteen and half numb already. On top of the four years of mentoring, she’d grown up doing this, expecting to go into the arena: she’s been watching footage of old Games year round since she was six years old, and so has everyone around her.

But Nico isn’t like that. She still feels everything so sharply, and Karolina wants nothing more than to wrap her in her arms and shelter her from the world.

Except she may know Nico better now, but she still doesn’t know her _that_ well, so she settles for a tentative hand over Nico’s, and knows she made the right call when Nico laces their fingers together.

“Tell me something about you,” Karolina says after a beat. It’s a completely transparent attempt at a tone shift but Nico gives her a watery smile anyway, the alcohol in her system making her more willing to engage.

“Um, okay. When I was little I wanted to be a witch.”

Karolina laughs. “Like, pointy hat, fly on a broomstick, do magic?”

“Hey, I thought they were cool,” Nico defends. “Who wouldn’t want to be able to do magic?”

“Fair point,” Karolina concedes, still grinning.

“Besides, I didn’t want to wear a pointy hat,” Nico says. “I wanted to be the kind of witch that, like, wore amulets to ward off evil and made healing potions out of forest herbs. I almost poisoned myself when I was six, but my sister found me right before I ate hemlock.”

Her voice wavers as she mentions Amy and Karolina listens patiently, overly aware of Nico’s warm hand in hers.

“Anyway, what about you?” Nico asks. “What did you want to be, before all this?”

“I never really _had_ a ‘before all this,’” Karolina says slowly. “Like, from the second I was old enough to understand what the Hunger Games were I knew I was going to be in them. It never made sense to plan past that, you know?”

Nico exhales heavily, her fingers tightening around Karolina’s.

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Karolina says, but she’d made her peace with the idea a long time ago so she doesn’t elaborate.

“Okay, but you’re through the Games,” Nico says, “so what do you want now?”

And Karolina has to bite back the _You, I think_ that rises suddenly to the tip of her tongue because where did _that_ even come from? Instead she shrugs and says “I guess I’m still figuring it out,” and Nico smiles softly at her and even though the air around them is rapidly cooling Karolina is suddenly warm.

==

After that night, something shifts between them.

It comes in bits and pieces, but Nico starts to open up to her more. Before, they’d done a lot of sitting in companionable silence, but now they start to actually talk. And it’s surprising just how _easy_ Nico is to talk to, how well they get along.

Karolina knows it’s dangerous to get close; any new person she lets into her life is just another chance to be manipulated by the Capitol.

But she’s been lonely for years, and Nico’s face has started to light up when she sees Karolina every night, mirroring the way Karolina herself feels, and Karolina can’t bring herself to give Nico up.

==

She gets so _close,_ this year.

One of her tributes makes it to the final two, but the Hunger Games doesn’t give you points for coming in second. And it hits Karolina hard, the one-two punch of knowing how disappointed her mom will be layered on top of the fact that a girl she’s spent years training is dead.

The final night of the Games, Karolina escapes from District 4’s suites right after dinner. They’re not leaving until tomorrow, but the actual competition is over and so there’s nothing for 4’s victors to do now except stuff themselves with the Capitol’s best food and bemoan how the game is rigged. She knows it’s way too early for Nico to be there but she can’t stand another minute in the stifling atmosphere of another failure, so she leaves the rest of the victors still at the dinner table and heads up to the roof.

Nico shows up as the sun is beginning to set with a half-empty bottle of wine in each hand. She offers one to Karolina, taking a swig from the other as she sits down next to her.

“Thanks,” Karolina murmurs, not bothering to wipe away the tear she can feel running down her cheek.

“I’m really sorry it ended like that,” Nico says. They can both feel how the words ring hollow, but the hand that Nico offers Karolina is warm and solid and Karolina threads their fingers together and holds on tight.

The more Karolina drinks, the less she thinks about her failures as a mentor and the more she thinks about just how close Nico is, how easy it would be to lean into her.

But that might be crossing some sort of line, so she keeps still. The only movement she allows herself is the careful stroke of her thumb across Nico’s knuckles, back and forth.

The distant sound of a raucous end-of-Games party echoes up to them from the city below, but it’s drowned out by their quiet conversation until Nico starts to feel like the only other real person in the world.

By the time the wine is gone it’s late, the night starting to bleed into early morning, and as much as Karolina wants to stay up here with Nico forever she knows that it’s time to go. She lets go of Nico’s hand to clamber to her feet.

Nico rises a second behind her and she stumbles, and Karolina catches her instinctively.

“Thanks,” Nico grins.

“Anytime,” Karolina breathes.

She’s not going to kiss Nico, but _god_ does she want to.

She lets go quickly, before she can even consider acting on the impulse, and is halfway to the elevator before Nico even realizes she’s moved.

As she elevator slows to a stop on Karolina’s floor, she wraps Nico up in a hug.

“I’m really glad I met you.”

“Me too,” Nico says, hugging her back tightly.

Karolina lets herself sink into it, trying to commit this warm feeling she has around Nico to memory; something to get her through the next eleven months until they see each other again. “See you next year, I guess,” she says as she pulls away.

The doors open, and Karolina should leave but there’s something that keeps her anchored to the spot, her hands still on Nico’s shoulders.

(She wants to kiss her.)

But the doors start to move and she snaps out of it and slides through, turning for a last glimpse of Nico’s face before the doors close between them.

==

**_seventy-three_ **

The thing is, Karolina has known she’s gay for a while. 

She came to the realization when she was maybe fifteen; somewhere around the fifth boy her mom tried to set her up with. 

Or was it the sixth? It doesn’t matter. She never went on more than one or two dates with any of them.

There had been a girl, when she was sixteen.

Her name was Liv, and she was in some of the training classes Karolina helped run, at Leslie Dean’s feeder school for the Hunger Games. They hung out after class for a few weeks, and one evening Liv kissed her behind one of the warehouses down by the dock.

But someone must have seen, because the next day Liv wasn’t in class, and Karolina checked the roster afterwards to find she’d been removed from the program entirely.

It took Karolina more than a week to track her down, and when she did all Liv would say to her is “we can’t talk anymore.” But Karolina had kept pressing, and eventually Liv mumbled something along the lines of “your mom found out,” avoiding Karolina’s eyes.

Because the other thing is: Karolina still agrees to the dates her mom sets up, avoids any sort of real relationship, because her mom is the only thing standing between her and the whims of the Capitol.

She’d found out after Liv, when she had gone to confront Mayor Dean about meddling in her life and her mom had snapped.

“There’s been a line of Capitol citizens waiting to snap you up since the second you made it out of that arena!” she’d hissed, face inches from Karolina’s. “They still respect me, for now. They still agree when I tell them my daughter is off limits, but that could change at any moment, and I won’t be able to do a goddamn thing about it.”

Karolina had surpassed her mom in height when she was 13, but that day she’d felt like a kid again, small and cowering under her mom’s furious glare.

“You can date girls, if you’d prefer,” her mom had continued, “but they still need to be suitable. I hope I’ve made the consequences clear if you try and go behind my back on this.”

“Okay,” Karolina had whispered then, afraid of her mom and more afraid of the Capitol.

But now? Knowing Nico makes her wonder if there could be more. It makes her want to risk it.

Except she could be putting Nico in danger. And she’s only spent a couple of weeks with her, but Karolina already knows that’s the last thing she’d ever want to do.

So she goes on first dates with girls whose names she barely remembers and who she never sees again, because her mom might respect Karolina’s sexuality but she sure as hell doesn’t respect her autonomy, and spends the entirety of every one wishing Nico were across from her instead.

The year passes in a blur: training the tributes-to-be, and doing her best to keep her mom happy, and (in quiet moments, when she lets herself) thinking about Nico, and how long it’ll be until Karolina can see her.

(Except she always feels selfish when she does, because seeing Nico means it’s the Hunger Games again.

And it’s stupid to be thinking about her this much, anyway.)

==

And then it’s Reaping Day, and the kids whose names are drawn from the bowl are replaced with tall, strong, top-of-their-class-and-excited Career tributes, and Karolina is on a train speeding towards the Capitol.

(Towards Nico.)

As always, the pre-Games week flies by in a whirlwind of sponsorships and alliances and last-minute preparations with barely a moment to breathe. Wherever she goes, Karolina automatically scans the room for Nico; she usually comes up empty, but she catches a glimpse of her a few times. Every time she has to remind herself to not react, even though it’s hard when every muscle in her body wants to run to her. On interview night they actually make eye contact and Karolina can’t stop herself from smiling at her. Over the last year she’d convinced herself that she’d built Nico up in her head because there’s no way anyone could possibly be that pretty, but Nico looks exactly how Karolina remembered. 

The day the Games start, Karolina barely waits to make sure both of District 4’s tributes have survived and settled in for the night before going up to the roof. Nico’s not there yet, but that’s okay— she’s pretty early, after all.

As the minutes tick by, though, she starts to get worried. Maybe their nights together last year didn’t mean to Nico what they did to Karolina. Maybe Nico has started to embrace her role as a mentor, and is spending the night working on strategy — what they’re actually in the Capitol for — instead.

Maybe she’s dating that other victor from 3 — Alex, Karolina thinks — and she’s not coming because she’s with him.

Fifteen minutes pass, and then half an hour, and Nico still isn’t there.

Close to the hour mark, when Karolina is starting to get cold and she’s almost convinced herself Nico isn’t coming at all, the elevator doors open. Karolina is up in a flash, and Nico’s barely made it out of the elevator before Karolina wraps her up in a tight hug.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Nico says. She holds Karolina tighter, and Karolina presses her face into Nico’s hair and inhales the scent of the Capitol’s expensive jasmine shampoo.

They stay on the roof talking until the sun comes up.

==

Karolina is walking a dangerous line.

At face value, what she has with Nico is nothing more than friendship. And that’s true, up to a point. Except it’s starting to feel more like a lie with every passing day; over the past two weeks, they’ve been edging towards more.

Five days in, one of Nico’s tributes kills both of Karolina’s and she’s barely even upset about it. (And how fucked up is that?) Because that night Nico offers her words of comfort, and takes her hand, and puts her head on Karolina’s shoulder.

Karolina squeezes Nico's hand, and rests her head on top of Nico’s, and wonders if she’s allowed to be happy.

Another five days after that, Nico’s wonder tribute is dead too.

Nico cries that night. She didn’t cry when the first one died (and Karolina mourns for how numb she’s becoming) but she does now, because it’s the first time one of her tributes actually had sponsors— the first time one of them seemed like they might actually stand a chance.

“Stupid, right,” Nico says, swiping at her eyes and laughing humorlessly.

Karolina shakes her head. She pulls Nico against her and holds her close as she sobs, and tucks Nico’s hair behind her ear and presses a kiss to her temple. Nico is smaller than her, all narrow shoulders and bony elbows where Karolina is muscular. It’s a wonder she won at all, really, but it means that now it’s not hard for Karolina to wrap herself around Nico in a way that feels protective.

When Nico cries herself out she shifts so her head is in Karolina’s lap, and Karolina combs her fingers through Nico’s hair. Gradually Nico’s breathing gets slow and deep, and Karolina stays as still as she can to let her sleep.

_This can’t happen this can’t happen this can’t happen._

But maybe it already is; this is the closest, the most intimate Karolina has been with another person ever.

Forcibly she reminds herself why she can’t let this go any further. Her mom may be able to protect her from sale to the highest bidder — and even that gets harder the older she gets — but Karolina’s been warned by other victors about the dangers of getting involved with someone. The second the Capitol finds out, they become a bargaining chip, and Karolina knows that whatever influence Mayor Dean has wouldn’t extend to Nico even if she wanted it to.

And for that matter, there’s no way her mom would approve of Nico. She might very well revoke Karolina’s protection as well, just to teach her a lesson.

So that’s it, then.

She lets herself watch Nico sleep for another minute, memorizing her, then shifts until Nico blinks awake. And she tells herself, as they ride the elevator down together, that she won’t go to the roof anymore.

==

Her resolve doesn’t even last a day.

(She should have known she couldn’t stay away from Nico for long. Not now that she knows what it’s like to be near her.)

Because the next night it’s only ten minutes past the time they usually meet when Karolina imagines Nico alone on the roof, waiting for her, and without even consciously making a decision she finds herself back in the elevator.

She makes up some excuse about getting tied up in district business when she gets to the roof, and Nico accepts the lie easily, and she takes Karolina’s hand when Karolina sits down next to her, and Karolina is a goner.

It’s selfish, but she can’t help it, really. So she’s going to let herself have Nico like this.

Like this, and nothing more.

==

The last day of the Games is anticlimactic. Both of 4’s tributes died near the beginning, so all the district’s victors have been pretty checked out since then. No one notices when Karolina steals wine and strawberries from the dinner table, all too wrapped up in their own petty problems.

Nico’s already there when Karolina gets to the roof, a dark outline against the brilliant sunset. Karolina pauses behind her to just look without Nico noticing, and wishes she could freeze time like this.

But Nico chooses that moment to turn, and her face lights up when she sees Karolina, and time goes on. 

Karolina offers Nico the bowl of strawberries as she sits beside her, “Panem’s finest.”

“Thanks, underpaid district laborers,” Nico says around a mouthful of strawberry. “Hey, watch this.”

She chucks the remaining half of her strawberry off the roof.

“Nico,” Karolina admonishes. And it feels _nice_ , like they’re just two delinquents maybe falling for each other, instead of two Capitol pawns with next to no control over their own lives.

The top boomerangs back and hits Nico in the face.

Karolina laughs and then, still caught up in the feeling, says, “Here, you’ve got some,” and before she can think about what she’s doing she reaches up to wipe the juice off Nico’s cheek. Her thumb lingers against Nico’s cheekbone, and her eyes dart from Nico’s lips to her eyes and get caught there a minute before Nico looks away.

“See?” Nico says. “Can’t have any valuable tributes offing themselves before they make it into the arena.”

Just like that, reality comes rushing back in, and Karolina remembers who they are, and what they’re doing. She agrees to Nico’s strawberry-top-throwing contest in a desperate attempt to hold on to some of that earlier warmth, even as the moment shatters.

They each drink half a bottle of wine and press closer into each other as their throws get more and more erratic.

When the bowl and the bottle are both empty Karolina laces her fingers through Nico’s and rests her head on Nico’s shoulder with a sigh. Nico shifts so their bodies settle against each other, and Karolina lets her eyes drift shut.

It’s just starting to get light when Nico wakes her. As Karolina lifts her head from Nico’s shoulder she can feel the pattern of Nico’s sweater where it’s left indents in her cheek and she yawns, rolling her head to work out the kinks in her neck.

“C’mon, sleepyhead,” Nico says, standing and tugging on their still-joined hands to tug Karolina up with her.

Except she doesn’t take a step back when Karolina stumbles upright and into her space and suddenly they’re inches apart. 

Karolina can feel Nico’s breath stutter against her chin, and she knows with utter certainty that if she leaned down right now, Nico would kiss her back.

_This can’t happen this can’t happen this can’t happen._

Instead she takes a step back and turns toward the waiting elevator, and pretends not to notice Nico’s soft exhale of disappointment.

==

**_seventy-four_ **

The year starts out the same as always, with the usual swaggering, confident volunteers stepping forward at Reaping Day, but that’s where the normalcy ends. Because it turns out that District 12 has a volunteer, too; there are _never_ volunteers from the poorer districts, and District 12 is the most downtrodden of them all.

Watching Gert Yorkes step forward when her sister’s name is called, Karolina feels something shift.

The sense of difference around this year only intensifies when they get to the Capitol, because they haven’t been there two hours before Karolina sees Nico again. She’s sitting at a table with some of the other victors, half-paying attention as they talk about strategy, when Nico walks in. Karolina’s breath catches, because Nico is so beautiful and Karolina has missed her _so_ much and she knows that Nico’s “I hit the wrong button on the elevator” excuse is bullshit, knows that Nico just came up here to see her.

And Karolina wishes she were as brave as Nico because she hasn’t stopped thinking about the night they almost kissed since then, and she thinks that if she had a chance to do it again she wouldn’t turn away.

When Chase Stein announces on live broadcast that he’s in love with Gert Yorkes, the blazing desperation on his face resonates somewhere deep inside Karolina, because that’s how she feels when she looks at Nico.

(She runs into Nico afterwards, in the hallway backstage. Technically she’s on a schedule, on her way to debrief with her tributes, but Karolina’s head is still full of Chase’s interview and seeing Nico brings her to a halt.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Nico replies.

It’s all they can say, for now, because they’re surrounded by a million cameras and someone could walk into the deserted hallway at any moment, but Karolina can’t stop herself from reaching out and trailing her fingertips along Nico’s wrist as they pass each other.

Once she’s out of the hall, she brings her hand up to press her fingers to her mouth and wishes that could be enough.)

==

Even by Karolina’s standards, the first day of the Games is bad. She’s been so focused on the differences this year that she’d almost forgotten that, to the Capitol, it’s business as usual, and it’s less than twelve hours before one of her tributes is killed.

And everyone she’s ever mentored has died but this one really gets to her, for some reason. 

By the time she gets to the roof she’s a mess, but Nico is already there and even through the fog of self-pity there’s a wave of relief that washes over Karolina at finally getting to be alone with her again. Nico looks exhausted but she reaches out for Karolina anyway, and when Karolina sinks into her arms and clings to her for dear life Nico holds her tightly and presses a kiss to the top of her head and it’s the first time all day that Karolina hasn’t felt off-balance.

“It never gets easier, does it,” Nico murmurs.

Karolina shakes her head, whispers, “I’m just— I’m _tired_.”

“I know,” Nico says, and her voice is soft and her eyes are softer and before Karolina can stop herself everything she’s kept bottled up since she had to take human lives at fourteen comes spilling out. 

“I’m starting to get it. Why so many old victors are addicts, or alcoholics, or just don’t even bother showing up anymore. They tell you if you can win it’ll be over and you’ll be set for life, but it’s a lie, isn’t it?” 

Her hands are shaking, but she tightens them on Nico’s waist and lets Nico ground her. “If what you did to survive when twenty-three others didn’t doesn’t fuck you up enough, then you have to watch new kids you care about go through exact the same thing, and remember how scared you were and how scared they must be, and then they die. But it’s still not over, because it’ll just happen every year, over and over until all you can think about is everyone you couldn’t save.”

Nico stays quiet through the end of her tirade and Karolina isn’t even sure what she wants her to say. But instead of saying anything Nico just pulls her closer and rests their foreheads together and she’s so fucking perfect, the one good thing Karolina has.

Every cell in Karolina’s body is screaming at her to just say _screw it,_ to lean down and kiss her. And Karolina may be selfish but she’s also terrified of what’ll happen if she screws this up so she just clings tighter, and takes what comfort she can from the warmth of Nico’s body against hers and Nico’s breath on her cheek and Nico’s hand stroking gentle and steady through her hair.

==

The death rate of this Hunger Games is unusually high; after a week there are only seven tributes left, including Gert Yorkes, Chase Stein, and the remaining tribute from District 4.

The night it gets down to seven Karolina is playing with Nico’s fingers when she breaks their companionable silence.

“I want Gert to win,” she says. “That’s kinda fucked up, right?”

Nico puts her free hand over Karolina’s, stilling her restless movement.

“Yeah. I do too, though.”

She laces her fingers through Karolina’s and brings their joined hands to her mouth to kiss Karolina’s knuckles, and Karolina feels the certainty of her love for Nico settle into her belly and permeate through her limbs like it’s here to stay.

==

Before she goes to meet with Nico one last time, Karolina finds herself sitting with Victor Mancha, one of the other victors from 4.

(Naming your kid Victor is a little taboo these days, but Victor likes to joke it’s why he won.)

Tonight, he’s uncharacteristically quiet. They’re both still reeling from the events of the day — the Capitol’s rescission of the two-victors offer, Gert and Chase’s last stand, the Games’ abrupt ending.

“What are you thinking?” Karolina finally asks. It’s a loaded question, one she wouldn’t dare ask most of her peers, but Victor is different. Karolina trusts him. He’s the closest to her in age, and doesn’t wear the rose-colored glasses common among victors.

Victor takes a second to respond, looking pensive. “Something bad is going to happen,” he says finally. “Mark my words. They’re going to want revenge for this.”

Later that night, when Nico is sitting curled into Karolina’s side and Karolina is tracing lines across Nico’s palm, Nico asks her about the future, about where the Capitol can possibly go from here.

Karolina thinks about Victor, and his certainty that they’ll want revenge. But she’s so _comfortable_ , here with Nico in this illusory bubble of safety they’ve built for themselves, and so she lies.

“I dunno,” she says. “I guess they’ll just act like that’s how they meant it to go from the beginning.”

After that, Nico gets quiet. As the silence stretches on, the illusion of safety that Karolina was so secure in only a moment ago starts to fade, like even though she’d lied Nico can see right through her. And something about this moment feels like it could be their last chance.

All of Karolina’s self-preservation flies out the window, and she lets herself _want._

Nico starts to say something, but Karolina cuts her off because if she waits another second she’s going to lose her nerve, and she cups Nico’s cheek with a confidence she doesn’t feel.

She leans in slowly, and Nico’s eyes get wide, and when Karolina is a hair’s breadth away she pauses. She might have decided she’s willing to risk it but she’s not going to force Nico into the same conclusion.

(Except isn’t it sort of too late, to think they could risk anything more than they already have?)

She needn’t have worried. Nico meets her in the middle, and it’s even better than Karolina could have imagined. Nico’s lips are impossibly soft, and her hand tightens around Karolina’s, and something clicks into place in Karolina’s chest.

Karolina pulls away after a few seconds. “Sorry,” she blurts, because she even though she knows Nico is on the same page she’s suddenly insecure, “I’ve just wanted to do that for a really long time, and after today I— I didn’t know if I’d get the chance.”

The way Nico’s looking at her, she’s not sure Nico heard a word she just said.

“I love you,” Nico says.

Any of Karolina’s lingering nervousness vanishes in an instant, and her smile stretches wide enough to split her face in two. She lets Nico wrap an arm around her to pull her closer, says “I love you too” before their lips meet again.

And Nico kisses her until Karolina forgets the bleakness of their situation, forgets the persistent feeling that something bad is going to happen, forgets everything but the feel of Nico’s hands on her hips and Nico’s mouth on her neck and the way Nico breathes _I love you_ into her skin every time they part for air and Nico, Nico, _Nico._

(Karolina gets back to her room only a few hours before her train leaves for District 4 but she doesn’t get any sleep anyway. She lies awake in bed replaying every kiss, every touch; she commits every detail to memory, and knows she’s going to remember this night for the rest of her life.)

==

**_seventy-five_ **

Karolina learns about the Quarter Quell even before President Jonah’s announcement, because of course it was bullshit that “the founders of the Games came up with this seventy-five years ago” or whatever the Capitol line their representatives are parroting is. It’s obvious that the Quells are strategically placed to squash any sort of rebellion and show that those in power can do whatever they want when one comes up.

Right now, the rebellion is about Gert Yorkes, and what better way to get rid of her easily and conveniently than to send her back into the arena?

It turns out that Victor was Karolina’s favorite for a reason. It’s from him that she learns about the continued existence of District 13 and the rebellion and everything that comes with it. He concludes turning Karolina’s world upside down by telling her that even if he doesn’t get picked he’s going to volunteer, to keep Gert safe, and he understands if she can’t but hopes she’ll do the same.

But it doesn’t even matter— even though she only had a 20 percent chance of being picked, her name comes out of the bowl for the second time in her life, and she’s going back to the arena.

And everything may be fucked up, but Karolina’s heart beats steadily faster the whole way to the Capitol, because every bump of the train on the tracks is one closer to Nico— Nico, who’s a tribute again, too.

She hasn’t stopped thinking about her since they saw each other last. Really, she’s only gotten through the past year on the thought of seeing Nico again. She’d returned home to an oppressive aura of disappointment, because the tributes last year did the worst they have in a while. Between that, and the prospect of having to go back into the arena, and the comment her mom had made when she got chosen, “Maybe you’ll have the right incentive to bring home another victory, now that it’s your neck on the line,” it all threatened to crush her, sometimes. And when it did, Karolina thought of Nico.

More than once over the past few weeks Karolina has regretted not just running, the second she found out about the Quarter Quell. Maybe she could have gotten a message to Nico and escaped, and maybe they could have met up outside the district fences and fled to District 13, and maybe that would be enough to finally let them just be together.

(Even though that wouldn’t have worked at all, because the only refugees that ever make it to 13 are those from outer districts, where the fences are weak and the Peacekeepers are underequipped and there’s less distance to travel. They wouldn’t have made it ten miles before getting picked up, but Karolina thinks it might have been worth it for even a _chance_ at a life with Nico.)

==

They aren’t able to meet the first night. It’s the opening ceremony and they’re watched so closely that Karolina avoids even _looking_ at Nico, and they get back so late that there’s no time to go to the roof.

(But Karolina dared to glance in Nico’s direction a few times during the ceremony, long enough to see Nico wearing something long and silver that accentuated her natural beauty enough that Karolina’s chest hurt to look at her.)

The second day, they pass each other once during training. They make eye contact and Karolina wants to run into Nico’s arms, but she channels her want into focus and instead throws a spear dead through the heart of the practice dummy in front of her.

That night, _finally,_ they have time. 

Nico’s already on the roof by the time Karolina gets there, and they all but sprint towards each other. Nico crashes into Karolina hard enough that all the breath leaves Karolina’s lungs (though that might just be the result of finally having Nico in her arms again), and Karolina hugs Nico tight enough that she lifts her off the ground.

She feels Nico’s legs wrap around her waist, so that she’s supporting all of Nico’s weight and Nico has to lean down to kiss her. It’s a new angle but it’s a good one, and as Nico cradles Karolina’s face between her hands and kisses her again and again Karolina’s legs start to give out. She sinks to the ground with Nico in her lap, and now that she’s no longer holding Nico up her hands are free to roam up Nico’s back and through her hair and down her sides before they settle, one curled on Nico’s hip and the other between her shoulder blades.

They still haven’t said a word to each other, too wrapped up in getting as close as they possibly can, but gradually the desperate urgency fades enough that they can pull away to breathe. Nico rests her forehead against Karolina’s and Karolina tips her face up so that she can feel Nico’s whispered “I missed you” against her lips.

“I missed you too,” Karolina says. “I never stopped thinking about you. I love you.”

“Me too,” Nico says.

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

Karolina grins, craning her face up so she can press her mouth to Nico’s again. It starts out chaste, the two of them smiling too much to kiss properly, but then Nico moans when Karolina’s teeth catch on her lip and her fingers press into Karolina’s jaw, changing the angle to deepen the kiss, and Nico licks firmly into her mouth and Karolina doesn’t know how she could possibly have gone a year without this.

==

The sense of urgency from their first night never goes away; as Karolina goes through the motions of training or sits with Victor trying to figure out how to keep Gert alive when they can’t be seen coordinating with anyone from other districts, a corner of her mind is always thinking about Nico, and how long until she can see her again.

They’re starting to get reckless, going up to the roof earlier than they used to, but it sort of doesn’t matter anyway. One way or another, this is the last time they’ll ever be in the Capitol like this, and Karolina wants to _know_ Nico, the feel of her mouth and the sounds she makes when Karolina kisses down her neck, sure, but also who she is, everything about her past and her family and what she used to want in life before all this happened to them.

She wants to cram the entire life they should have had together into a week.

==

But as much as Karolina wants to lose herself in the joy of finally, finally being with Nico again, she’s been a tribute too long to put the Capitol out of her mind completely. Because if the Capitol didn’t know about them before then surely they must now, and even though it’s easy to forget her paranoia when Nico’s body is wrapped around her own, she needs to tell her. No matter if it ruins everything they have.

So she does, pulls away from Nico’s greeting kiss one night halfway through the week and says, “Wait.”

Nico pauses, her hand still on Karolina’s hip.

Karolina fights against the urge to lean back into Nico and takes a step back, so that Nico’s hand falls to her side. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore,” she says, and immediately feels awful at the upset confusion on Nico’s face.

“What?” Nico manages.

“I think they know,” Karolina says, and she doesn’t have to clarify but if she doesn’t keep talking her throat is going to close up and she won’t be able to breathe. “The Capitol, I mean. They know, and they’re going to use it against us.”

“That’s it?” Nico asks, and now the disbelief in her voice is tinged with anger. “That’s why you want to stop?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Karolina says. “We’re about to go into a murder arena that they control. Any bit of leverage they have over us matters.”

“What if I don’t care,” Nico says, and even though her sentiment matches Karolina’s own feelings the words send a shock through her. Her whole life has been defined by the idea that everything she does, every move she makes, should revolve around the Hunger Games, and yet here Nico is, brazenly defying that very idea.

Nico steps back into Karolina’s space, tugs her closer with hands on her waist, and Karolina lets her.

“I don’t care,” she repeats fiercely. “I love you, and we’ll probably both be dead in a week no matter what we do. Shouldn’t we make the most of our time now?”

“I love you, too,” Karolina whispers, and she can’t think of another argument for why they should stop and doesn’t particularly want to try. So she doesn’t, and instead rests her palm against Nico’s cheek and leans their foreheads together.

When Nico tilts up to kiss her Karolina sinks into it, and it’s not enough but it’s what they have.

==

Before Karolina knows it their stolen week is up, and it’s the night before the Games.

_Interview night._

Karolina doesn’t care for it but it’s the reason she won the first time around. Her fourteen-year-old self charmed every rich potential donor that laid eyes on her and they showered her with help, so that even though she wasn’t the strongest or the fastest she was the one everyone wanted to see win, and so she did.

Tonight she waits in the wings for her turn, watches as Nico walks across the stage towards Caesar.

Nico’s dress is dark, lace curving up her throat even as it leaves her shoulders bare, and Karolina wants to kiss the black lipstick off her mouth.

The beginning of the interview goes as expected, but halfway in Caesar asks a question that Karolina would be lying if she said she didn’t see coming but that clearly takes Nico off guard.

“Trusted sources tell me you’re dating Karolina Dean. How do you think your relationship will affect your approach to the Games this year, given that you’ll be competing against each other?”

Nico, bless her heart, does her best, but it’s hard when Caesar plays a supercut of their stolen moments for all of Panem to see, splashed across the giant screen behind them. Even Karolina, completely hidden from view in the wings, shifts uncomfortably. She can only imagine how Nico feels under the bright lights on stage, watching the two of them kiss in high definition.

(The frames where they aren’t kissing are almost worse, even, because it’s so obvious how in love they are, written plainly across their faces when they think no one is watching, and Karolina feels _so_ stupid for pretending that no one was.)

And thank god Nico’s interview ends before Caesar can ask any more questions. Karolina knows it’s only a brief reprieve because he’s saving them all for her, but at least she has the duration of Alex Wilder’s interview to compose herself, willing the flush out of her cheeks, and she thinks she’s just about managed it when her name is called.

She settles in front of Caesar with a warm smile and this, at least, she knows, this kowtowing to the Capitol’s every whim in an attempt to make them love her. And she knows that a lot of them already do so she plays that up, fielding Caesar’s generic questions with ease.

He pauses and she knows what’s coming, forces herself to relax the hands that want to curl into fists and keep the bland smile plastered onto her face when he asks her about the love the Capitol has invaded. She makes it through the first couple okay, at least refraining from punching Caesar in the face when he says Nico’s name.

He asks his final question and she knows that Nico is watching so for once Karolina drops her guard, allows herself to respond from the heart.

“Will your feelings change anything about the way you compete?”

Karolina swallows hard, her palms sweaty in her lap. She imagines she’s speaking only to Nico when she answers, “I’m going to do my best to make sure Nico is the one to make it out alive.”

==

That night when Karolina gets back from her interview she changes quickly, and starts to put a coat on over her flannel in preparation for meeting Nico one last time when she hesitates, one arm through the sleeve. Because it’s their _last time,_ and everyone knows now so they don’t really need to sneak around anymore, and Nico looked so fucking beautiful tonight and Karolina wants her so _fucking_ badly.

She hangs her coat back up, and when she passes the lounge closest to the elevators she sees Victor alone, lost in thought, and something makes her pause.

He looks up when she enters, continuing to peel the orange he’s holding.

“Going to see Nico?”

Karolina nods.

“Try not to get back too late. Tomorrow’s an important day.”

“I know.”

There’s a pause, during which Victor splits his newly-peeled orange in half.

“You really love her,” he says.

“Yeah,” Karolina says simply.

“I don’t need to tell you how dangerous that is.”

“All my life, I’ve been the perfect tribute,” Karolina says. “Mayor’s daughter, top of my class. Youngest victor ever.” She smiles bitterly. “She’s the first person who’s ever made me feel like more than that.”

Victor offers Karolina a slice of orange, and eats it himself when she shakes her head.

“I watched you,” he says, “after you won. Youngest victor ever, like you said— surrounded by adults who all won at eighteen, can’t have been easy. And those first few years, you seemed so lost. I honestly wasn’t sure how long you were going to last, before something happened. But then you started to come into yourself, like you finally cared. I thought it was just that you were growing up, and the kids you weren’t mentoring weren’t older than you anymore. But thinking back, the change started the year after she won. I guess it makes sense, that you would throw everything away for her.”

“She’s worth it,” Karolina says softly. “Bye, Victor. See you tomorrow.”

Somehow, talking to Victor has made her more sure of her next course of action, and when she gets to the elevator she hits the down arrow.

Her heart is pounding when she steps out at Nico’s floor, and she realizes she doesn’t know where Nico’s room is. She’s never even been to this floor before. Just as she’s about to start knocking on random doors one of them opens and Alex Wilder walks out, stopping abruptly when he sees Karolina standing there.

“Um,” Karolina says.

“Second door on the left,” Alex replies with a sort of sad smile, like he knows why she’s here (of course he knows why she’s here, all of Panem knows after that video).

“Thanks,” Karolina says, and she waits awkwardly until Alex has gone back into his room before she continues to the correct door and knocks.

Nico opens it and she’s wearing her usual sweater, clearly planning to meet on the roof, and Karolina is suddenly unsure.

(Is this at all appropriate, and she’s never done this before and what if she’s bad at it, and maybe this was a bad idea and she can just leave and pretend this never happened and meet Nico up on the roof in ten minutes.)

“Hey,” Nico whispers.

Her expression shifts quickly from surprise to something darker, and Karolina’s throat is closing up but she manages to choke out, “Nico.”

Nico reaches out for Karolina, pulling her through the doorway and guiding their lips together even before the door shuts. Once it does she pins Karolina up against it, and Karolina’s hand finds the soft bare skin of Nico’s hip under her sweater. She bites at Nico’s lip and Nico moans, and insistent fingers in Karolina’s hair angle her chin upward to expose her neck, and Karolina’s head falls back against the door as Nico kisses down her throat. She can feel marks forming where Nico’s lips were but Nico is already continuing down, and her mouth and then her hands find the first button of Karolina’s shirt.

Karolina presses her to keep going when Nico pauses, putting her own hands over Nico’s to guide her through the buttons, and she’s burning up with the heat of Nico against her. But there’s no relief even when Nico finally gets her shirt open because Nico is looking at her like she wants to _devour_ her, and Karolina’s hands fell off Nico’s sides when Nico was undressing her so while Nico presses kisses to the newly exposed skin of her chest Karolina slips her shirt the rest of the way off and then reaches out to pull off Nico’s sweater.

Nico is only wearing a bra underneath and so when Karolina drops the garment on the floor she’s free to put her hands on the warm skin over Nico’s ribs and grip her tight enough to press her back towards her bed and then across it. Nico crawls backwards until she presses up against the pillows and then Karolina is above her, her mouth on Nico’s jaw and her thigh between Nico’s legs.

And this time she’s the one that pauses, her hands at the waistband of Nico’s leggings, and it’s Nico who puts a hand over her trembling one and urges her lower.

And Nico gasps against Karolina’s neck and arches up into her, and Karolina loves her.

==

Later, when Karolina hasn’t yet been able to make herself leave the warm comfort of Nico’s bed and she’s on her back with an arm around Nico’s shoulders and Nico curled into her side, she says, “I’m sorry.”

Nico looks quizzically at her and she clarifies. “I should have made us stop a long time ago, so you didn’t have to go through that interview.”

Nico’s face softens, her fingers absently tracing the line of hickeys she’d left along Karolina’s collarbone. She says, “It’s okay. I knew what we were getting into, what could happen. And it wouldn’t have stopped those questions tonight.”

“But maybe there wouldn’t have been that video,” Karolina counters.

“You tried to make us stop, remember?” Nico says. “I didn’t let you, I didn’t want to. Besides, getting outed the way we did wasn’t all bad. I get the feeling we wouldn’t have— tonight wouldn’t have ended the way it did, otherwise.”

Karolina blushes, hiding her smile in Nico’s hair before she presses a kiss to her forehead.

For a while after that they’re quiet, savoring the feeling of getting to hold each other one last time.

And then Nico says, “I don’t want to die.”

Karolina’s heart aches at her words. She knows the plan is really just about Gert, and District 13 is half expecting the rest of them to die in the process of getting her to safety, but dammit she doesn’t want Nico to die either so she says, “I won’t let you,” as if she’s ever had any say in the matter.

But Nico follows it up with “I don’t want you to die either,” and Karolina almost breaks. She can’t promise that, because there’s just _something_ that makes her feel like she’s not going to get out of this alive.

So she avoids the issue by kissing Nico, hard and drawn out and more than a little desperate. She tries to memorize her, the way she tastes and smells and the soft noise she makes in the back of her throat when Karolina’s nails dig into her neck, and Nico kisses her back like she understands what Karolina is trying to say.

And when Nico falls asleep Karolina slips out from under her, pulls her clothes back on, and pauses in the doorway for one last look at the love of her life before she leaves Nico behind forever.

==

The next morning passes in a haze of last-minute preparations and stylists and frantic whispers from Victor as they’re herded onto the transport ship. It feels like they’ve only just left when it lands, and he and Karolina are ushered off the ship and onto their respective platforms.

They rise into the arena, and it finally hits Karolina that this is she’s going back, that this is _real,_ and she suddenly wants to throw up. But she’s been trained her whole life for this so she keeps her head held high and emerges in the middle of a lake. The cornucopia behind her is full of weapons, and even from across the water Karolina can tell there are no survival supplies; they need to get Gert out fast. She’s just started to get her bearings when she sees Nico across from her, and their eyes meet as the countdown begins and Karolina has never hated the Capitol more than she does in this moment.

_Three_

_Two_

_One_

The buzzer goes off and Karolina dives into the water, swimming towards shore as though her life depends on it.

Which, really, it does.

She’s barely dragged herself onto the sand when a woman is on her with a scimitar.

The woman slashes down and Karolina rolls away, so the blade slices open her shirt and grazes her shoulder instead of going into her chest. Karolina jumps to her feet before the woman can swing again, backpedaling towards the pile of weapons behind her. She trips over a long knife, snatching it up in time to parry the next blow.

This woman is fast but she’s in her thirties and it’s been years since she won. Karolina, meanwhile, has been doing the exercises with the kids she’s been training since her own victory, and it’s less than a minute of circling each other before Karolina finds her opening. She darts around the woman’s outstretched arm as she swings again, and her knife finds the center of the woman’s chest.

Karolina winces when the blade tears through skin and muscle and hits bone but she’s already turning to find the next threat by the time the cannon sounds the woman’s death. She doesn’t find anything immediately pressing, but she also doesn’t see anyone she’s supposed to be keeping track of, no Gert or Chase.

(No Nico.)

A quick glance across the bodies strewn across the ground through the last vestiges of fighting around the cornucopia tells her they haven’t died, at least.

She doesn’t know what she would have done if Nico _had_ been among them, if she were dead already. Because she might have made her peace with their inevitable tragic ending when she left Nico’s bed last night, but seeing her at the start of the Games just now reignited an ember in her chest, a tiny flicker of hope that lets her _want._

So she runs into the forest by herself, her only goal for the moment to stay alive long enough to see Nico again. 

The cannon goes off twice more that afternoon, but both are early enough that Karolina can convince herself it’s the people still on the beach, and Nico and Gert and the others are okay. 

She camps for the night in a tree, hidden in the foliage twenty feet up and secured as best she can against the trunk, and manages to get a few hours of sleep thinking about last night with Nico instead of this one without her.

She leaves early the next morning. The general plan, in case they all got, separated was to meet back at the cornucopia at noon on the second day. It’s still far too early for that but Karolina doesn’t think she can take sitting in the tree without knowing what happened to Nico and the others for much longer, so she might as well start moving.

After an hour or two of walking with no particular destination she hears movement in the bush. Karolina tenses, but if she squints the outline she can make out through the foliage looks like Victor and so she stays where she is, gripping the handle of the knife hanging from her belt.

Sure enough, the trees part and Victor emerges, with Tristan, District 10’s tribute, a step behind him. 

“Thank god,” Victor says, resheathing the long knife at his side, and Karolina relaxes her grip on her own.

She keeps walking, now with them, and it’s quiet until it’s not.

A gong sounds four times, different than the tribute death cannon, and suddenly there’s growling behind them. At least eight mutts, the giant mutant dogs genetically engineered by the Capitol to be as bloodthirsty as possible, burst out of the trees, and Karolina’s fight-or-flight response settles quickly on flight. She takes off in a dead sprint and can only hope that the crashing through the bushes behind her is Tristan and Victor, because she’s focused only on getting as far away as fast as possible.

They’ve almost made it to the beach, the trees growing thinner (and Karolina’s lungs feel like they’re going to burst out of her chest from running, and she’s not sure what’s going to happen once they get there anyway, how they can possibly survive this one), when there’s a yell to her left, and she turns to see Tristan go down with a dog on top of him.

Taking her eyes off the ground was a mistake. She trips, and barely manages to get her knife up to stab the one coming at her in its muzzle before it can sink its teeth into her. It backs away with a howl, long enough for her to scramble to her feet, and she and Victor to rush to Tristan’s side.

Victor slashes at the one tearing into Tristan’s chest until its lifeless body rolls onto the ground but it’s too late, and Tristan’s torso is a bloody mess.

The part of Karolina’s brain that isn’t still trying to process the horrifying scene in front of her is wondering why they aren’t _all_ dead by now, given how many mutts there were, but she looks up and they’re retreating back into the forest, gone as suddenly as they appeared.

“C’mon,” Victor chokes out, and Karolina helps him hoist to Tristan over their shoulders and stagger towards the strip of water visible through the trees.

They burst out onto the sand and immediately Karolina panics because there are _people here,_ but her panic subsides into relief when the figures come into focus and it’s Chase and Gert and Alex and Nico.

(And everything is going to shit, but a bit of the tightness in Karolina’s chest still eases at the sight of her.)

Now that they’re with allies, she and Victor feel safe enough to put Tristan down gently on the sand. When they were walking Karolina had thought that they could maybe clean his wounds and get him stable somehow, but now that they’re no longer in the dappled shade of the forest it’s immediately clear how bad the bites really are. She can’t do anything but kneel helplessly beside him, and hope that he doesn’t suffer too much, and it’s not long before his breath ebbs to nothing and the cannon sounds.

After that there’s not much to do but wade into the lake with Victor to rinse the blood out of their clothes as best they can. Victor stops once his knees are submerged, leaning down to splash water across his body, but Karolina keeps going until it’s past her waist. 

She falls back and lets the water close over her head. The ambient sounds of the forest and the lapping of ripples against the shore disappear, and it’s just Karolina alone with her thoughts. Her eyes are closed against the water but she can see Tristan’s body projected on the back of her eyelids. 

And then the image of Tristan disappears, and he’s replaced with the girl from District 8 who had been a tribute in Karolina’s first games. She’d been kind and shared her protein bars and let Karolina tag along with her, and then she was killed by Karolina’s own fellow tribute from 4. He’d stood over the body of Karolina’s friend and told her that it wasn’t worth it to kill the mayor’s daughter, that he was sure someone else would take care of her soon anyway. Karolina had run as fast as she could then, wanting nothing more than to get away, and for a brief moment she considers it now. She could just swim away— the lake’s not very big, she could make it to the opposite shore and disappear into the trees and hope the others can pull off the plan without her.

Except, _no._ What would be the point of all of this, if she ran away? And she would be leaving Nico behind, and now that she’s found her again Karolina never wants to leave her side.

With a gasp she emerges from the water, wading back to shore and following the others back into the jungle so Tristan’s body can be airlifted away.

As the adrenaline finally starts to wear off all Karolina can think about is how thankful she is that Nico is here with her. She falls into step beside her as they walk, and Nico threads her fingers through Karolina’s and squeezes, and Karolina is so glad that Nico is alive.

After an hour or so they stop for a water break. Nico leads Karolina over to a tree a bit away from the others, leans her head against the bark and runs her thumb across the inside of Karolina’s wrist.

“I was worried you’d left me forever, Karrie,” she says, grinning a bit so it seems like she’s joking, but Karolina can hear the hint of genuine anxiety under her light tone.

“I could never,” Karolina smiles, and ignores the way the words taste like a lie.

==

That night Karolina takes first watch with Nico. They sit with their shoulders pressed together, and if Karolina tries hard enough she can almost pretend that they’re safe and back on the roof, except instead of the flat concrete she’s sitting on bumpy tree roots, and the hum of the city has been replaced with the eerie quiet you get in a forest at night, where every bit of rustling sounds like a wild animal coming to get you.

None of that really matters, though, because Nico is _here,_ beside her, and her hand is a comforting weight on Karolina’s knee, and Karolina feels so so guilty but she’s sort of glad that Nico got chosen too, that if Karolina had to go back to hell at least she has company.

And she hadn’t been lying to Caesar, when she said she thought she owed the Games, because no matter how much she hates the system with every fiber of her being, deep down it’s hard to hate the odds that brought her Nico.

When their watch is over and they lie down to get a few hours of sleep, Nico kisses her firm and steady before she tucks her head under Karolina’s chin, her head pillowed on Karolina’s shoulder.

Karolina tightens her arms around her. “I love you.”

Nico presses a kiss to the bit of Karolina’s collarbone by her mouth and says, “I love you too,” and Karolina never wants morning to come, she wants to stay here holding Nico forever.

==

Morning comes, because no matter how all-consuming Karolina’s love might be it’s still not enough to stop the passage of time, and besides she’d learned a long time ago that being a tribute means nothing ever truly goes your way. Once the six of them work out the knots in their backs from sleeping on the hard forest floor they head back down to the beach to draw up a plan.

They’ve figured out how the arena works, sort of, and are trying to come up with their next course of action when screams emanate from the forest.

“Molly,” Gert says, and she’s off like a shot, kicking up sand behind her as she sprints towards the trees.

Nico is the first to react and the first after her, Karolina stumbling over the sand behind her. As she tries to follow Nico into the trees she hits an invisible barrier, falling backwards into Chase.

“What’s going on?” Chase says frantically, reaching around her to press his palm to what seems to be a wall of solid air keeping them out of the forest.

“It’s the clock,” Alex breathes, and Chase whips around to look at him in bewilderment but Karolina understands; the horror of the hour is in this section and nothing can get in or out until time is up.

Except Gert and Nico are _in there_ , and she feels like her throat is going to close up because whatever’s in there could _kill_ them and she _just_ got Nico back.

Speak of the devil because there Gert and Nico are, running back towards them surrounded by jabberjays. Karolina knows that sound probably can’t get through the barrier any better than she can — she can’t hear either their crashing progress or the birds behind them — but she can she screams, _“Nico!”_ anyway.

And she watches helplessly as Nico crashes into the barrier a second behind Gert and the two of them grope along it for an opening Karolina already knows isn’t there.

As they’re looking for a way out more and more jabberjays arrive, and Karolina doesn’t know what sort of sounds they’re making, who or what they’re mimicking, but they’re clearly driving Nico and Gert insane. The two of them kill as many as they can but they’re eventually, inevitably overwhelmed by the sheer volume of birds around them and Karolina can only watch as Nico sinks down with her back pressed to the barrier, hunched over with her head between her knees.

Karolina forgets about everything that could attack them, still vulnerable on the beach, forgets that they’re supposed to be coming up with a plan right now, and she can only hope that Victor and Alex are keeping a lookout because Chase is focused on Gert and all Karolina cares about is that the girl she loves is in pain. She knows it’s hopeless but she slams her fists against the invisible wall anyway, until her knuckles crack and bleed and her voice is hoarse with shouting and Victor drags her away from the edge.

He lets go of her when she stops struggling and falls to her knees, her hand pressed against air. And it’s torture because it’s _so_ thin, and her hand isn’t even an inch away from Nico’s back, but no matter how hard she presses it won’t let her through.

Finally, _finally_ , the hour is up and the barrier disappears. It’s sudden, like a switch is flipped and they can finally hear the sounds from the forest again, the air filled with the fluttering of jabberjay wings as the hordes of birds go quiet at once and fly off.

Nico barely moves from her position on the ground except to fall backwards where she was leaning against the barrier, and Karolina catches her and holds her so tight.

And once Karolina’s arms are around her Nico seems to come back into herself a little, and she turns so her face is pressed into Karolina’s neck and she can wrap her arms around Karolina’s waist, and Karolina kisses her forehead, her temple, her jaw, her mouth.

Nico is talking, sort of, her voice trembling so much that she can barely get the words out. “The birds— screaming— Amy, and you—”

Karolina’s heart breaks at how fragile Nico sounds and she holds her tighter, and she whispers “I’m okay, I’ve got you,” into Nico’s mouth and strokes her hair until Nico stops shaking.

(She keeps a close eye on Nico for the rest of the day, even once they’ve left the beach. Nico insists whenever Karolina asks that she’s okay, but she’s a little too quick to flinch at sudden noises and so Karolina is careful with her, taking her hand more than she needs to and staying a step closer than she would otherwise. Nico never says anything about it, but Karolina can tell she’s grateful by the way she leans into their contact.)

==

That night Alex offers to take first watch and Karolina shoots him a grateful smile. Nico is still jittery, and Karolina isn’t ready to stop being overprotective yet.

Nico tugs Karolina down with her as she lays down and Karolina curves her body around Nico’s, wrapping her arm snugly around Nico’s waist and pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. Nico lets out a long sigh, and Karolina can feel some of the tension finally drain out of her body.

Before long Nico’s breathing evens out and she goes slack in Karolina’s arms, but Karolina can’t sleep. She can’t get the image of Nico’s anguished face out of her head. And sure, Nico is safe with her now, but the hour she spent watching helplessly as Nico was tortured is sticking with her more than she’d care to admit.

After a while spent taking comfort in the steady rise and fall of Nico’s chest without getting any closer to sleep herself, Karolina gets up, carefully extricating herself from around Nico and walking over to where Alex is sitting on watch.

He looks up when she sits down next to him.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Karolina says.

The forest is quiet around them, and Karolina feels distinctly awkward. She doesn’t think she’s ever been alone with Alex, much less had a conversation with him. But just as the silence starts to ease towards comfortable he breaks it.

“You two are good together.”

“Thanks,” Karolina says. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I mean it,” Alex says. “You’re really good for her. I kept an eye on her family after, you know,” (and he doesn’t finish the sentence but Karolina remembers the first Games after she won, Alex coming out on top while the girl he went in with died on day 3) “and the last few years are the happiest I’ve ever seen her.”

Karolina doesn’t know what to say but Alex doesn’t seem to be expecting a response, caught up in his own thoughts.

“I asked her out, you know,” he continues. “A year after she won, after she mentored for the first time. She said she couldn’t because of Amy, and I’m sure that was part of it, but… Now I’m wondering if it wasn’t because she had already met you.”

Karolina sighs, looks over to where Nico is sleeping and traces her dim outline with her eyes.

“I hate this.”

“I know,” Alex says quietly. “Me too.”

“Thanks for looking out for her,” Karolina says.

“Of course.”

“If—” Karolina starts. Alex seems like the most practical among them, the least likely to offer her platitudes instead of actually fulfilling her request. “If anything happens to me—”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Alex says.

“Just if,” Karolina says. “Will you tell Nico— make sure she knows it’s not her fault.”

“Karolina—”

“Alex, _please._ ”

Alex’s expression is pained.

“Okay,” he says. “I promise.”

By the time Alex’s watch is up Karolina’s eyelids are finally starting to feel heavy, and when Alex goes to wake Victor she makes her way back to where Nico is sleeping. She tries not to disturb her, folding herself carefully around Nico, but she doesn’t quite manage it because Nico shifts in her arms, turning so they’re facing each other.

“Is it time to get up?” she mumbles sleepily, and even like this she’s beautiful and Karolina is so in love.

“Not yet,” Karolina whispers. “Go back to sleep, love.”

The term of endearment almost gets caught in her throat but it ends up rolling easily off her tongue, and Nico makes a noise of assent and buries her face in Karolina’s chest.

And for the first time Karolina lets herself hope that they might actually make it out of this okay.

==

She’s so so stupid because of _course_ they don’t, of course it all blows up in her face the next day.

She and Nico run a cable from the lightning tree to the lake, and as they’re walking back Karolina is hit with a sudden, unshakeable certainty that something bad is about to happen. Nico is a half step ahead of her but suddenly even that much distance is too far, because if something is coming then first Karolina needs Nico to know how much she feels.

She gets Nico’s attention with a soft, “Hey.”

Nico turns, and Karolina quickens her pace so they’re side by side.

“I meant what I said, you know,” she says. “During that interview. The Hunger Games are horrifying, but meeting you— I think meeting you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Nico says, “Me, too,” and catches Karolina’s hand in hers. And Karolina knows she understands, can feel their connection deep in her bones the same way Karolina can, like it’s been there before they met and will keep them tied together no matter what happens to them.

But their moment is shattered as Karolina’s thigh suddenly erupts in pain.

She looks down to see a spear buried in her leg and her knee buckles. Her hand slips out of Nico’s as she collapses to the ground, and she’s barely aware of Nico making short work of both the spear-thrower and her partner, too preoccupied by the copious amounts of blood now pouring from the wound and soaking through her pants.

Her vision goes fuzzy around the edges but it’s still mostly clear as Nico crouches down next to her, hoisting her back to her feet and pulling Karolina’s arm over her shoulders for support.

“Come on,” Nico says, and Karolina already knows it’s useless because there’s still a _spear_ jutting out of her leg and she sees stars as she stands too quickly. But Nico’s voice is desperate and pleading and _scared_ as she says, “Back to the tree, we can make it,” so she tries even though her leg screams at her with every step and they only make it a few yards before it gives out again beneath her.

(There’s a tiny selfish part of her that wishes their roles were reversed, because she could probably carry Nico back to their allies but there’s no way Nico is getting her there. But thank god she’s going to be the one who doesn’t make it, not Nico, never Nico, and Karolina won’t have to find a way to go on without her.)

“Nico, I can’t do it.”

She so badly wants to, wants to try again and clear the horrible devastated look off of Nico’s face, but they don’t have time before the lightning strikes and if Nico doesn’t go on without her they’re both going to die here.

“I’m not leaving you,” Nico says, and she’s crying and Karolina knows that she understands she has to and just wants to put it off for as long as possible. And _god_ so does Karolina, but every second Nico stays here with her decreases her chances of getting back in time.

“Nico, go. You have to go.”

Nico nods, but instead of leaving, she kisses Karolina. And it feels like the end, like these are the last moments they’ll ever have together.

And maybe the last moments they’ll have, period.

Nico helps Karolina over to the nearest tree so she can lean up against it, retrieving the knife from where she buried it in the body of the woman who threw the spear and handing it to her, and Karolina grips it tightly as though it’ll make any difference at all.

“I love you,” Nico says, and her voice is thick with tears.

Karolina threads her hand through Nico’s hair and pulls her down for one final kiss, so soft it makes Karolina’s bones ache, and she drinks Nico in, commits her to memory so she can have something to hold onto as she dies.

“I love you, too,” Karolina says when they break apart for the last time. “It’s gonna be okay. Now, _go_.”

A tear drips off Nico’s chin and onto Karolina’s unhurt leg and she nods and turns, running back towards their allies. 

Karolina watches her back until she’s gone, and it’s only when she can no longer hear the sounds of Nico crashing through the jungle that she finally lets herself cry.

Twenty minutes later, there’s a thunderous _boom_ in the direction Nico went and the sky lights up as electricity ripples through it, tearing a hole in the dome above them.

An airship descends through the newly created gap, and Karolina can barely make out four figures hoisted into the air in slings. She’s too far away to see details but one is slight with a long black ponytail, and Karolina sags in relief because _Nico made it out_ , and she slumps against the tree and lets the knife slip from her fingers.

Her last thought is of Nico as she finally succumbs to darkness.


	2. then fall back together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “the thrill of this fic is that it’s like an inverted fake dating au” -bella

**_zero_ **

Karolina wakes up to a blinding white light.

_Am I dead?_

But her body hurts too much for that, and as her vision clears the light becomes more obviously fluorescent and she starts to notice the familiar sound of an airship whirring in the background. When Karolina tries to sit up she finds her wrists are strapped to the gurney she’s on, but she can still turn her head and when she does she sees Chase, unconscious and similarly restrained next to her.

Her leg gives a sudden throb, and she looks down to find that someone has removed the spear and bandaged the wound in her thigh.

The door hisses suddenly open. Karolina cranes her neck and can make out a male figure who curses when he sees her awake, calling for a nurse. A second figure appears behind him with a syringe, bustling over to Karolina’s side.

She tries to squirm away but there’s nowhere for her to go and he grabs her arm, pressing the needle into her vein, and everything goes dark again.

==

When Karolina wakes up again she’s no longer on the airship. Now her surroundings more closely resemble a hospital, and she’s alone. She has no idea where Chase went.

Doctors come periodically to change the dressing on her leg as it heals but they always leave without talking to her, ignoring her questions and not even looking her in the face. As time wears on with no change in her circumstances Karolina starts to feel like she might be going insane, unable to move and with no one to talk to. Her voice grows increasingly raspy with disuse.

Whenever the isolation threatens to overwhelm her she closes her eyes and thinks about Nico, her touch and her kisses and the way she always looked at Karolina like she was the most important person in the world.

(No one had ever looked at her like that before. Sure she was important when she won the Games, but even to her mother she was never more than a tool, a means to bring glory to her district. But it never felt like that with Nico, because Nico made her feel like she mattered just by virtue of being her.)

If Karolina tries hard enough she can imagine that they’re back on the roof, and Nico is holding her hand and whispering that everything will be okay, and if she tries hard enough she can almost believe that it will be.

==

Eventually the wound in her leg closes up, and she’s sedated and moved again. This time when she wakes up she’s lying on a bench seat in a small room with metal walls, and she’s so used to being restrained that it takes her a second to realize she’s free to move.

She never knew that the simple act of standing up could feel so good. Her mostly-healed leg shakes at first, but gradually she remembers how to balance and can begin to examine her surroundings.

She tries the door, but isn’t surprised when it doesn’t budge. The rest of her cell is even tinier than she first thought, with no identifying features but the bench seat and a grate in the floor.

With nothing to do she lies back down, staring listlessly at the ceiling.

She’s thinking about Nico again when the door opens, and Karolina jumps to her feet.

Her eyes go immediately to the metal implement the guard in the doorway is holding, but it turns out to be innocuous, just a pair of hair clippers.

She shies away from him anyway, backing into a corner as he approaches and digging her heels in when he tries to pull her away from the wall.

“Let’s not make this more difficult than it needs to be,” he says. “This is the easy part.”

Karolina shrinks further away from him, and he shakes his head. “Come on,” he says. “Remember your little girlfriend? Nico, I think her name was? You wouldn’t want to make things harder on her, would you?”

Karolina’s blood runs cold. _No, Nico got away. She can’t be here._

But she can’t take that chance, can’t risk doing anything to hurt Nico.

“That’s what I thought,” the guard says, as she goes slack and lets herself be tugged into the middle of the room.

“You’ll thank me later,” he adds grimly, as he shears off the long blonde locks that made Karolina the darling of every wealthy socialite in the Capitol. Karolina stays quiet during the process, trying not to look at her hair as it falls to the floor.

Soon after he leaves the door opens again, and this time the man that enters her cell doesn’t look like a guard, his clothes well-fitting and expensive and his shimmering blue hair combed neatly back. Close behind him are two larger men in guard uniforms, and Karolina eyes the three of them nervously. Since the first guard left she’s been sitting on the back corner of the bench with her knees pulled to her chest, trying to get used to the feel of air against her newly-exposed scalp and not daring to wonder what could possibly be coming next.

“Good afternoon, Karolina,” the blue-haired man says.

Karolina glares at him, keeping her mouth shut.

“Now, now,” the man says, “we don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. Let’s try again, shall we? Good afternoon, Karolina.”

This time it’s more forceful, a dangerous edge to his voice, and Karolina allows herself another second to glare before she decides it’s not worth it.

“Hello,” she mumbles.

“Better,” the man says. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now we can get started. I have some questions for you.”

He leans casually against the wall opposite where Karolina is still curled into the corner.

“Let’s start with an easy one. What does the rebellion have planned for Gert Yorkes?”

Karolina shrugs. “I don’t know.”

His eyes glint menacingly. “Are you sure?”

“They didn’t loop me in on that part of the plan,” Karolina says sarcastically. “I have no idea.”

The man sighs. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

He motions to the guards, and they move towards Karolina. One of them drags her out of the corner as easily as if she weighed nothing, and holds her in place while the other punches her in the stomach.

Karolina wheezes, trying desperately to pull air into her lungs. She’s punched again, and she would fall over if not for the first guard still holding her up.

“That’s enough,” the blue-haired man says. The guard releases her, and Karolina crumples to the ground. “Shall we try another question?”

That afternoon Karolina learns what the grate in her cell floor is for. Once she’s refused to answer any of their questions and they’re done beating her to a pulp, they take a hose to the room and wash her blood away. Karolina watches it swirl down, mesmerized.

==

From there she falls into a sort of horrible pattern. Every day she wakes and waits for the blue haired man to come question her. Every day she refuses to answer his questions. The day ends when she passes out, crumpled and bleeding in the corner of her cell.

After days of this (at least she thinks it’s days; she has no measure of how much time has passed other than how often she’s fed and how often the blue-haired man comes) she’s pretty sure they don’t even care about the answers, and just want an excuse to torture her while making her feel like she’s bringing it on herself.

Old wounds reopen even as new ones form, but she knows they have a vested interest in keeping her alive because every time they leave they send in a medic to patch her up. She’s much gentler than Karolina’s other visitors, and it might just be a sick way to keep her craving affection but Karolina can’t help but be grateful for her careful hands and kind eyes.

Once, under the pretense of bandaging a particularly nasty cut on her shoulder, the medic leans close and whispers, “Don't worry— she got out, she’s safe.” 

Karolina hasn’t shown any emotion yet but she almost cries at that.

_That first guard was lying. She’s okay._

The only thing that gets her through it all is Nico, and the knowledge that she got away, and she clads herself in armor built out of memories of their time together to shield herself from the pain she’s in.

And on the rare occasion they ask her about Nico she says, “She got away,” and she laughs.

==

Finally, after a month of this, something changes. Her cell door opens as it always does, and Karolina instinctively braces herself for more pain, but this time instead of the blue-haired man it’s just the two goons that accompany him. They each take an arm and drag her outside, and she’s too weak by now to put up any sort of a fight so she just goes, her feet barely touching the floor.

They lead her along one long hall and down another (Karolina tries to remember the turns, _left, left, right,_ but it all looks the same and eventually she loses track) until they end up in a big, sterile white lab.

The person waiting for them isn’t the blue-haired man — he’s older, and his hair is a natural-looking shade of brown — but he looks at Karolina in the same clinical way that makes her skin crawl.

“Karolina,” he greets her, as though they’re old friends and this is a long-standing appointment between them, “you’re in luck! We’ve developed a new treatment. We’re already trying it out on Chase Stein, with excellent results. It’s only been two weeks, but he’s halfway to believing Gert Yorkes is the enemy already. It’s a long shot, but it might work to get rid of her. When District 13 comes to rescue him, they won’t be expecting him to attack her.”

“Great,” Karolina says emotionlessly. _But what does that have to do with me?_

“You may be wondering what this has to do with you,” he continues, as though she hadn’t spoken. “This treatment is still in experimental stages, and we want to explore what else it may be able to do. Lucky for us, we have a second test subject! We know from Chase that we can warp your memory of another person, but what about forgetting someone entirely?”

He grins, and it only takes Karolina a second to realize what he’s talking about.

“No,” she says, for the first time struggling against the men holding her. “No, you can’t.”

_How will I get through this without her?_

He just leers at her, and Karolina feels like she’s under a microscope.

“You’ll be rescued at the same time Chase is, of course. But you won’t be able to warn them about what we’ve done to him, because you’re going to forget this entire conversation as well.”

“No, _please,_ ” Karolina says, but he’s already tapping at a syringe as a lab assistant wheels an enormous screen in front of her and presses a button on the side. And then Karolina is assaulted with scenes of Nico, Nico in the arena during her first Hunger Games and Nico talking to Caesar Flickerman and Nico smiling at her and Nico’s head on her shoulder, during one of their stolen nights together.

Seeing her, it really hits home how far removed from all of that Karolina is trapped here in the Capitol, and she almost cries because she misses Nico _so much_ , is only barely surviving this hellhole on the thought of getting to see her again. She’s so caught up in the images that she hardly notices the syringe enter her arm, but the drugs take effect immediately and then she barely even remembers where she is, can only sit slackly as the memories flash before her eyes.

The drugs are wearing off by the time they throw Karolina back into her cell, hours later. She crawls into the corner of the bench and curls shakily in on herself, and she thinks about Nico as hard as she can (and she’s relieved to find she can still remember it all in perfect detail, the exact way the setting sunlight reflected off her hair and the deep brown of her eyes and the pitch of her voice when she moaned into Karolina’s mouth and the way being wrapped in her arms always made Karolina feel so safe) as if imagining Nico hard enough will tattoo her existence onto the inside of Karolina’s brain.

==

Time goes by, and the physical abuse doesn’t stop, but now it’s interspersed every other day with a visit to the lab. After a month, Karolina’s memories of Nico are still intact, and she’s starting to hope that it won’t work.

Usually before her lab treatments, they’ll ask her questions about Nico, to gauge how much she remembers. It’s comforting to know she can still answer them all, but having to think about Nico in such a clinical way makes Karolina feel sick.

She’s in yet another trivia session, gritting out her answers to a thousand insignificant questions, when for the first time something changes.

“What district is Nico from?”

“Three.”

“What was her sister’s name?”

“Amy.”

“What color hair does she have?”

“Brown.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Which Hunger Games did she win?”

Karolina opens her mouth to answer but nothing comes out because she _can’t remember_ , but she knows that she met Nico during the 72nd and it was her first time as a mentor so it must have been the one before that, right?

“Seventy-one,” she says finally, and the man questioning her — the same one that’s in charge of the experiment, and who Karolina is growing to hate even more than the blue-haired man — smiles malevolently.

“How did she win?”

And Karolina can’t intuit her way through this one, and _fuck._ She’s been so confident for the past few weeks that their treatment wasn’t working but now suddenly here’s proof that it is, and she’s _terrified._

“Fuck you,” she hisses, and the man’s grin widens.

“I think that’s all for today,” he says, even though all they’ve done is question her. For once Karolina struggles against her guards as they grab her arms to take her back to her cell, and it takes them by surprise enough that one of them loses his grip. 

The man in front of her doesn’t step back in time, and Karolina’s fist connects solid and satisfying against his cheek. It’s not as forceful as it would have been two months ago, her body weak from imprisonment, but his head still snaps to the side with the force of the impact and he looks back at her with rage breaking across his features.

“On second thought,” he says, “hold on a minute.”

He waits until Karolina is securely restrained again, her upper arms held tight enough to leave bruises, before he steps close, his cheek reddening and his eyes narrow.

“Do you really think anything you do matters?” he asks, his voice all the more threatening for how quiet it’s become. “We knew about the two of you from the very beginning, no matter how subtle you thought you were being. We just didn’t do anything because we already had plans in motion to bring old victors back for the Quarter Quell, and your story arc had the makings of some _excellent_ television. Star crossed lovers, forced to fight to the death. Did you think it was just coincidence that you were both chosen again?”

He laughs softly, his breath hitting her cheek, and Karolina spits in his face. Immediately he draws back, his expression ugly.

“You think this little relationship will protect you. You think if you can only hang onto it, everything will be alright. Don’t you know we’ve owned you since day one? Now,” he says, turning away to signal for a lab tech, “I think we’ll go ahead with our usual treatments.”

And Karolina thrashes and yells until the all-too-familiar prick of a needle entering her arm forces her body still.

==

At the end of week five, Karolina forgets Nico’s face.

She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and tries desperately to remember, can recall the press of Nico’s body against hers and the sound of her voice when she whispered _I love you_ but no matter how hard she tries it eludes her.

During week seven, she forgets Nico’s voice.

By the end of week ten, all she has left is the name _Nico_ , and the vague, frustrating feeling that this is a person who’s immensely important to her, if she could only remember.

A week later, even that’s gone.

==

Karolina wakes, as she’s done every day for as long as she can remember, in a small underground room. She’s not allowed to go outside, but that’s okay: the Capitol employees tell her it’s for her own safety, that after the Quarter Quell the districts started turning against victors and she needs to stay out of sight, and she trusts them. 

She doesn’t remember any of the purported uprising, of course, but she doesn’t remember anything from after the first day of the Quell. She’s just grateful to the Capitol for helping her forget. Those must have been some pretty traumatic experiences if they were bad enough to need to be wiped from her brain.

All she has to remind her of her second time in the arena is a thick, healed scar on the outside of her thigh. They tell her it’s from a spear that almost cost her her life, and they barely got her out in time.

(She has newer scars, too, as well as some cuts and bruises that are still healing, and every so often new ones appear that she never remembers getting, but they don’t tell her about those and she doesn’t ask.)

Today her normal doctor, the one that comes in to examine her and make sure she still doesn’t remember anything she shouldn’t, is late. Ten minutes after he was supposed to arrive she hears shouts from the corridor outside, but she knows the door is locked so she doesn’t even bother trying to investigate.

Suddenly the door bursts open, and four people in tactical gear enter her room.

“Hey, Karolina,” one of them says, “I need you to come with us, okay?”

Karolina shrinks away, because surely these are the people going after victors. But then she recognizes the one talking— Alex Wilder, a victor from a few years back. If he’s with them they can’t be the ones she’s afraid of, right? But if this was planned then why did no one tell her she was going to have to leave?

“No,” she says, proud of how little her voice shakes, “I think I’ll stay here, thanks.”

Her answer seems to take Alex off guard, but he recovers quickly. “Come on, Karolina,” he says carefully. “We’re here to take you to 13. Nico is there, waiting for you. She’s— she’s really missed you.”

“Who?” Karolina says, and Alex’s face falls, so Karolina knows that was the wrong answer. Nico must be from her lost time, and she wonders how someone from a time so painful to her that it was stripped from her memory could miss her so much.

Alex turns to the person next to him for help and they just shrug. “Well, she’s alive, at least,” they say.

“I know, thank god,” Alex replies in an undertone, before he turns back to Karolina.

“I’m really sorry about this,” he says, and before Karolina can even open her mouth to ask what’s happening he and his companion are cornering her, and his companion holds her arm while Alex injects something into it and the world goes dark.

==

When Karolina wakes she’s belted into a chair in an airship. She panics until she realizes that her arms and legs are free and she can unbuckle herself, and she’s able to relax enough to take in her surroundings.

Her thoughts feel different, her head clear enough now that she can recognize how foggy it was the whole time she was in the Capitol. For the first time, she thinks that maybe they were lying to her; that maybe her recent kidnapping was actually a rescue, and Alex is one of the good guys.

Chase Stein is across from her, still asleep. Karolina doesn’t know what he could possibly be doing here, and she starts to panic again because _where are they going?_

Before she can work herself up too much, though, Alex enters the room, and he smiles at her when he sees she’s awake.

“Where are you taking me?” Karolina asks.

“We’ll be in District 13 in a few hours,” Alex says. “We had to drug you to get you out, I’m sorry.”

“Nothing I’m not used to,” Karolina shrugs, and he looks pained.

“I know. We just used a mild sedative, but the Capitol was giving you a pretty nasty cocktail—” _Oh, that explains the fogginess_ “—you’re in for a rough couple of days.”

Karolina’s head only gets clearer as the flight goes on, the drugs the Capitol had been using on her finally starting to leave her system, but the worst of the withdrawal symptoms haven’t hit yet. Alex stays with her, asking questions to pass the time, and with every answer his eyebrows knit closer together.

Because Karolina remembers the beginning of the Quarter Quell, remembers winning her own games and having to go back seven years later, and some of the time in between. But she doesn’t remember getting picked up by the Capitol, or much of the mentoring she did in any Games after 71.

It’s like someone has gone through her memory and picked out bits of it, and she begins to shake off some of the drugs’ effects she also starts to remember how much she detests the Capitol, and the gaps in her memory that she’s lived with for weeks start to bother her.

When they finally make it to District 13 she’s moved to a hospital ward. She wants to stay awake, wants to be of use, but even the thin mattress of the hospital cot is more comfortable than what she’s used to sleeping on, and she falls asleep almost instantly.

==

She opens her eyes to find a girl standing at her bedside, looking at her with what if Karolina didn’t know any better she would call longing.

“Who are you?” Karolina asks, and the girl’s face crumples before she tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to plaster a neutral expression onto her face.

From the missing time, then.

“I’m an old friend,” the girl says, her voice thick.

Karolina does her best to explain why she doesn’t recognize her. How the Capitol took her memories, to rid her of their associated pain. She doesn’t believe the explanation herself at this point— it’s wrong, it’s all wrong, but Karolina doesn’t know what’s right yet, and this girl is already so visibly upset that Karolina doesn’t want her own internal conflict to make it worse.

When the girl asks about the 71st Games Karolina frowns, because that’s the first one she’s missing. How did this girl know?

But almost immediately after that the girl all but runs from the room, and Karolina is left staring at the doorway where she disappeared and puzzling over why she doesn't remember her.

==

Karolina doesn’t have too long to think about the girl, at least not at first. Because soon her withdrawal symptoms set in in earnest, and Alex was right about having a rough couple of days. After the first one she’s almost forgotten what it’s like to _not_ be clammy and nauseous.

One of the doctors hovering around her — Xavin — gives her something to counteract the worst of the cravings, but she’s still barely able to sit up, only able to think about how exhausted she is and how sick she feels.

Once, near the height of the pain, when she’s so delirious she barely knows where she is, she wakes up in a new room. It takes her a moment to register that the chipped paint on the ceiling that she’s been staring at for the last day is gone— she's in a larger room now, with a row of single beds. When she manages to fight her nausea enough to turn her head she sees Chase in the bed next to her. 

“Hey,” she croaks, and he looks over at her. He looks as bad as Karolina feels, his face pale and clammy, his cheeks creased with sheet marks and his eyes bloodshot. 

“Sup,” he says, tone casual but voice still raw. It sounds like he’s been screaming.

“How long have we been here?”

“I dunno. I only woke up a minute ago,” he says. “I feel like shit.”

“You look it, too,” Karolina says, her lightheadedness making her brutally honest.

Chase manages a weak laugh. “Thanks. I probably deserve it, though.” There’s a long pause while Karolina stares up at the ceiling, too tired to respond. “I'm assuming you heard what I did?” Chase says eventually.

“I've been a little preoccupied.”

“Gert came to visit me, and I—” he shudders, closing his eyes. He stops for so long that Karolina begins to think he may not finish the sentence at all. “I attacked her. I think she's in the hospital now.”

“Oh,” Karolina says sadly. Her memories may be half-gone but she remembers how Chase and Gert felt about each other.

“The Capitol _did_ something to me,” Chase continues. “You know the worst part? I would absolutely do it again, if I saw her again. Like, I love her, I know I do, but at the same time there's this part of me that thinks she's the worst person in the world. I want her dead, and I don't know how to stop.”

His voice cracks as he trails off. Karolina looks away from the broken expression on his face to give him privacy, doing her best not to cry herself at the thought of everything the Capitol has taken from them.

“Fuck,” Karolina breathes, because she doesn't know what else she can say. She thought she had it bad, not being able to remember anything about her past, but Chase has it so much worse. At least she never had anyone she cared for like Chase did Gert, for the Capitol to corrupt that way. 

“Do you think—” Chase starts. 

“What?”

“Do you think they broke us? Like, am I going to have this monster inside me forever?”

“Hey,” Karolina says, aching with the need to reach out for him, to comfort him in any small way she can manage. But far too sick and nauseous to even attempt the action. “You can't think like that. You have to get back at them, whatever it takes.”

“If I'm doing it then you've gotta do it with me.”

“Okay, deal,” Karolina says, using the last of her strength to reach her arm out in a shaky fist. “You’re gonna get Gert back, and I’m gonna remember all the time they took from me, and we’re gonna get revenge.”

“Deal,” Chase says, reaching his own arm out to tap his fist gently against hers. 

For a moment they’re quiet, and Karolina feels herself start to drift off again. 

She's half-asleep when she hears Chase sigh, “This sucks.”

“Tell me about it,” Karolina mumbles. 

“At least you still have Nico,” Chase says. “I can’t even been in the same room as Gert.”

“Alex said that name, too,” Karolina says, voice fading even as she speaks. “But I have no idea who that is.”

If Chase replies, Karolina is asleep before she hears it.

When she wakes again, the pain has reached a peak Karolina didn’t even think was possible. The bed next to her is empty and Chase is gone, if he was ever there at all. She begs for more drugs, to be how she was in the Capitol again, _anything_ to make it all stop. And after, once the pain has eased and she can think straight again, she’s horrified with herself. She was so relieved to be free of the Capitol’s influence that she can’t believe she’d ever want to go back, because under their drugs she wasn’t living she was existing.

And she can’t — _won't_ — go back to that, no matter how much it hurts right now.

Finally the symptoms start to dissipate, and they take with them the rest of the fog that’s been clouded densely through Karolina’s head for weeks. Her memories don’t come back, but the intense _wrongness_ she’s started to associate with their disappearance gets stronger, and her mind may be full of gaps but it’s also the clearest it’s been in a long time. As she starts to understand what she’s doing in 13, all she can think about is getting her memories back, and helping the rebellion bring the Capitol down.

She’s so focused that her maybe-real conversation with Chase is driven completely out of her mind.

==

The girl from the hospital, Karolina learns a few days post-withdrawal, is the Nico she keeps hearing about.

Karolina sees her sometimes, mostly out in the hallway as Karolina recovers, and Karolina’s caught her once or twice poking her head into the room when she thinks Karolina is asleep. But Karolina doesn’t sleep much anymore, not really. When she first arrived it seemed like it was all she could do, but now that the drugs are gone and she’s no longer sedated, she’s plagued by nightmares that she never quite remembers but that leave her shaking. She’s offered sleeping pills, and she tries them once, but all they do is leave her trapped in the prison of her dreams for that much longer, so she gives up and resigns herself to never getting more than a few hours of sleep at a time.

(More than once, she wakes up with Nico’s name on her lips. Except she has no idea why, and the scraps of the nightmares she _can_ remember are bad enough that there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to know.)

But even though her nights are bad her days are getting better, and the bruises that dot her body start to heal. She feels like she’s actually getting enough to eat, and within a few days she’s strong enough to walk for longer than a minute or two. Eventually she’s able to move out of the medical ward entirely and into an actual bedroom, one that doesn’t lock from the outside and that she can leave whenever she wants. 

She doesn’t actually leave all that much, especially at first. Between the chronic lack of sleep and the loss of muscle mass from her time in captivity she’s tired all the time, and the sudden amount of open space at her disposal makes her nervous. But it’s nice to know she can.

Instead she devotes her time to plotting against the Capitol. Now that she’s freed from their influence, she can truly see the horror of what they’ve done to her. Because no matter how hard she tries, she can’t remember her missing time. 

She can remember why she hated the Capitol, all the shit they put her through as a kid and every negative feeling they brainwashed out of her in captivity. And even if she doesn’t actually remember the rebellion it’s easy to fill in the blanks about why she joined, and why she should help them now.

But Nico remains a mystery. She still doesn’t know why she knows Nico, or why Nico sometimes looks at her with so many emotions layered on her face that Karolina can’t even begin to untangle them.

They start hanging out, because apparently Nico has volunteered to help with Karolina’s recovery. Mostly, this just entails keeping her company. After so many days in solitude, first at the Capitol and then to a lesser extent in the med bay, Karolina is at first mostly just grateful to have _someone_ around.

Before Nico, her only regular visitor besides her doctor was Victor. She’d almost cried the first time she saw him because _finally_ there was a familiar face, someone she knew beyond just seeing them on TV. But he could never stay for long, his work for the Capitol taking precedence over Karolina, and she understood but it never stopped her from missing him when he left.

Nico, meanwhile, stays with her for hours at a time. 

Karolina asks her about it, on the third consecutive day Nico spends with her. She knows that Nico has responsibilities, that she sometimes goes on missions that take her outside the district, but Nico just shrugs her off.

“This is important, too,” she says, avoiding Karolina’s eyes, and she’s clearly omitting something but Karolina doesn’t push.

It turns out that Nico is remarkably easy to talk to. Sometimes Karolina will find herself drawn in by her smile and she gets this feeling that there’s something missing, something _important_.

But the conversation will move on, and the feeling will fade.

(She doesn’t tell Nico about her nightmares. Because no matter how quickly Nico becomes — or re-becomes — her friend, she’s still not quite ready for the look on Nico’s face when she finds out Karolina isn’t sleeping.

The more time they spend together, the more Karolina realizes just how personally Nico is taking her recovery, and how deeply she cares about Karolina’s well-being. Sometimes Nico seems like she’s about to fall apart, and the only thing keeping her together is the time she spends with Karolina.

And Karolina can barely take care of herself, but somehow the last thing she wants is to break Nico by letting slip just how messed up she still is.)

After two weeks, she starts to remember again.

She and Nico are playing cards when Nico’s seventeen-year-old face, scared and determined, slides into her head and suddenly the 71st Games, where she’d only been able to remember Topher’s death and not the perpetrator, are a complete memory again.

It’s not much, but Nico doesn’t quite manage to hide the hope that flickers across her face at the news.

==

Nico learns about her nightmares, eventually. Given how much time they spend together, it was unrealistic that Karolina could keep them from her forever.

It’s at the end of a day when Nico has been out on a mission for 13. Karolina wasn’t allowed to go (and it makes sense because she’s still not strong enough, but she also hasn’t been above ground since she got here and she’s starting to go stir crazy) so she spends the day instead with Gert’s sister Molly, watching her move beds and tables out of storage. The districts are growing increasingly unsafe, so after decades of a relatively stable population, District 13 is suddenly getting bigger by the day.

She helps too, what little that she can manage. But it’s _so_ frustrating because she remembers how strong she used to be, and now she can barely lift the end of a bed frame without needing a break.

Between the physical exertion and the way Molly is prone to talking your ear off if you let her get going, she’s exhausted by the time she gets back to her room. It’s still early, and Nico said she’d try to stop by later, and so Karolina tries to stay up. But she’s the kind of tired that she can feel in her bones, her limbs languid and heavy. She can barely keep her eyes open long enough to change, and once she falls into bed she’s asleep within seconds.

She ends up in one of her usual nightmares, full of disturbing imagery and a sense of being trapped that never quite goes away. Except instead of thrashing around until she accidentally wakes herself up, she’s shaken awake much faster by someone’s hand on her shoulder, and she opens her eyes to find Nico next to her, her expression almost as anguished as Karolina feels.

“Are you okay?” Nico asks, and Karolina takes a deep breath, willing her heart rate to slow.

“Yeah. I just get nightmares, sometimes.”

She does her best to keep her voice from shaking, but it clearly doesn’t work because Nico looks even more upset.

“That’s not like any nightmare I’ve ever had, and I won the Hunger Games. How often does this happen?”

“A few times a night,” Karolina says.

Nico looks like she’s about to cry. “Karolina,” she says, and her voice cracks, and Karolina just wants Nico to stop looking at her like that. “Karolina, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Nico gives the slightest shake of her head like she wants to disagree, but instead of arguing she curves her hand around Karolina’s shoulder.

“If there’s anything I can do, tell me. Please.”

There’s a polite refusal on the tip of Karolina’s tongue, but as she opens her mouth she realizes she doesn’t actually want Nico to leave. She’s not really sure why— in the grand scheme of things they barely even know each other. But even as shaken as Karolina still is, this is the safest she’s ever felt after a nightmare.

“Actually, could you— could you stay with me tonight? I don’t want to be alone,” she says, and Nico nods and whispers, “Of course,” and Karolina doesn’t know why she feels so relieved.

Nico leaves to get changed, and Karolina starts to second-guess herself. Her nightmares aren’t _that_ bad, really. Does she really have to resort to the comfort of someone she barely knows, someone for whom all their distress seems to stem from Karolina?

But Nico comes back, and Karolina didn’t even realize something in her chest was tight until it loosens at Nico's return.

Nico climbs into bed with her and lies a safe, respectful distance away, but Karolina doesn’t want propriety she wants comfort.

“Will you hold me?”

She doesn’t miss the look of panic that flashes across Nico’s face at her request but she’s selfish enough to discount it for tonight, to lean back into Nico’s body and pull Nico’s arm around her waist.

She’s almost asleep before she feels Nico relax into her, feels the ghostly pressure of lips between her shoulder blades.

(Almost, but not quite.)

==

Memory two comes the next morning. This one isn’t a clear series of events like the first, just a feeling of intense familiarity, a feeling of rightness, that comes with waking up in Nico’s arms.

And Karolina is starting to have a theory, about what she and Nico were to each other before her mind got wiped.

But if Nico had wanted her to know she would have told her, right? She must have a reason for keeping something like that to herself.

(Even if she can feel it buried somewhere deep inside her, telling her that what she feels goes deeper than affection for a recent acquaintance. Except she can’t explain it and when she thinks about it too hard it’s like trying to remember a dream, slipping away faster than she can reach for it.

But if she had to try she would say it’s like there’s a string anchored somewhere behind her ribs, that if she followed it would lead to Nico.)

So instead she plays up the confusion she feels, saying, “Have we done that before?”

“Like I said,” Nico says. “Old friends.”

But Nico didn’t grow up learning how to lie the way Karolina did, and she gives herself away in how she swallows before she answers, her eyes darting quickly away from Karolina’s face and back.

Karolina doesn’t push, and lets her have the lie.

Because _god_ , waking up in Nico’s arms felt so good that she never wants to stop. The following night she asks Nico to come back, and she keeps asking, and the speed with which Nico agrees tells Karolina that her theory might just be right.

She starts curling automatically into Nico’s body even as she sort of feels bad for exploiting how Nico feels about her. But Nico lets her, and she holds Karolina tightly through her nightmares, and sometimes Karolina thinks that maybe it’s okay if she never remembers everything as long as she can stay in Nico’s arms.

The nightmares don’t stop, but somehow they don’t feel as awful if she wakes up and she’s not alone. She can still never remember them, but they leave an aching sense of loneliness behind that’s lessened by the security that comes from Nico’s arm around her waist and Nico’s knees slotted behind her own.

==

One night, her third nightmare of the night sticks with her.

_She’s propped up against a tree in the middle of a forest. Her leg is in almost unbearable pain, and she looks down to see a spear embedded in the meat of her thigh, blood oozing from the wound and soaking through the material of her pants._

_She glances back up just in time to see a figure vanish into the trees, and she didn’t catch their face but from their hair and build there’s no way it could be anyone but Nico._

_Even after Nico is gone, Karolina stares at the place where she disappeared, and she grits her teeth against the pain in her leg and waits to die._

“Karolina!”

Karolina opens her eyes to see Nico looking down at her with concern. This nightmare isn’t fading the way they usually do, and when she lets out a shaky exhale it comes out half a sob.

“Hey,” Nico says. She pulls Karolina into a sitting position and gathers her into her arms. “Hey, it’s okay, it was just a dream.”

Karolina leans into her as the cold rush of adrenaline drains from her body, but she can’t stop thinking about the nightmare. For the first time, Nico’s presence doesn’t feel quite so comforting.

“You left me.”

“What?” Nico says, her hand falling from where it’s been rubbing Karolina’s shoulders, and even though her feelings for Nico are all muddled up right now Karolina still mourns the loss of contact.

“During the Quarter Quell,” Karolina says. Nico doesn’t even try to deny it, and her expression is stricken and apologetic and fearful, like now that Karolina knows this thing about their past she’s going to kick her out forever.

Honestly there’s a part of Karolina that wants to, that feels the pain of watching Nico walk away from her as she bled out like it was yesterday.

But there’s another, bigger part that’s still tugging her back towards Nico. That wants to be in her arms no matter what may have happened in the past. Besides, the narrative her nightmare gave her doesn’t feel quite complete somehow. It’s hard to reconcile the dream-Nico that ran away from her without looking back with the girl in front of her now that’s been so caring, so dedicated to Karolina’s recovery.

And she can’t remember getting injured, only how it ended— how much it hurt and how much blood there was. She knows what she’d do now if she were in that same situation, so she offers up the only explanation that makes sense.

“I told you to go, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” Nico’s affirmation is barely a whisper.

“I’m glad you did,” Karolina tells her, and despite the lingering stress from the nightmare she actually means it. Because leaving meant that Nico wasn’t picked up by the Capitol, isn’t now plagued with the same trauma that haunts Karolina day and night.

She pulls Nico into a hug and Nico buries her face against Karolina’s shoulder. For once their positions are reversed and it’s Karolina comforting Nico, her fingers mapping soothing patterns against Nico’s back, and Nico’s hands are fists in Karolina’s shirt, her knuckles white. When they finally break apart, Nico’s eyes are red.

“Do you still want me to stay?” Nico asks, tentative like she’s not sure of the answer. But how could she not be, when it’s starting to feel like she’s all Karolina has ever wanted?

“Of course,” Karolina says, and Nico’s face crumples with relief.

Normally when they sleep next to each other Karolina’s back is to Nico, Nico curled protectively around her like she can shield Karolina from her nightmares with her body alone. This time, though, Karolina turns so that her face is in the crook of Nico’s neck and her arm is around Nico’s waist. Nico stiffens for just a second before she relaxes, draping her arm across Karolina’s shoulders. 

Their new position feels almost too intimate, but not in a bad way. It’s like the thread anchored in her chest has gotten shorter and shorter until Karolina couldn’t keep Nico at a distance even if she wanted to. And Karolina only feels Nico’s chest rise and fall a few times before the steady rhythm of Nico’s breathing lulls her to sleep.

==

Between being imprisoned at the Capitol for months and escaping to District 13’s underground base, Karolina hasn’t been outside in what feels like forever. It’s fine, it is, but one of her favorite feelings has always been lying outside with the sun on her skin. The skylight in her room can really only give her a faint echo of that, and she _misses_ it.

So when Nico comes into her room one day and tells her that she’s gotten permission for them to go on a walk outside that evening, “but just for an hour, and we have to stay close to base,” Karolina throws her arms around her with a squeal.

(And when she breathes, “Thank you,” into her ear she feels Nico shiver against her.)

Stepping outside for her first breath of fresh air in months, Karolina feels free in a way she hasn’t since before the Quarter Quell. It’s the golden hour, the sun turning the field of wild grass they’re in the kind of green Karolina had almost forgotten was possible. She steps out of the shade of a tree to tilt her face up to the sun’s last rays, soaking it in.

She opens her eyes to find Nico watching her with an intensity that takes Karolina’s breath away, but when Nico sees her looking she blinks and takes off running. Karolina is left to chase after her, laughing and not entirely sure she didn’t completely imagine it.

They spend the rest of their hour just wandering, Nico letting Karolina take in everything she’s been missing. At one point Karolina trips over a tree root, and Nico catches her hand for balance, but even after she’s found her feet Karolina doesn’t want to let go. She turns her hand in Nico’s so their palms are flat against each other and keeps walking.

Once it’s gotten too dark to see properly, they make their way back to the concealed entrance. Karolina finally lets go of Nico’s hand and sits down to feel the wild grass under her fingers.

“I don’t want to go in yet.”

“Me neither,” Nico says, and sits next to her.

And Karolina might not remember Nico but she knows her from the two months they’ve spent together in 13, and she wants to kiss her.

And _oh._

That’s a new thought.

And maybe it’s the fresh air clearing her head or maybe it’s her sudden new feelings triggering old ones, but Karolina suddenly remembers another time, sitting with Nico in the dark, Nico looking at her with soft eyes.

She says, “I remember you.”

Nico’s face lifts into an expression so hopeful it’s almost painful to look at, and Karolina hastens to clarify that it’s still not everything. But regardless, this is the most she’s remembered at once.

She remembers holding Nico’s hand, passing a bottle of wine back and forth that first year when she suddenly didn’t feel quite so alone, and wanting to kiss her almost as much as she does right now.

She lets her gaze drop to Nico’s lips and Nico’s breath stutters, and there’s absolutely nothing stopping Karolina from leaning forward and catching Nico’s mouth with her own.

Except for Nico’s comms device, which buzzes just as Karolina starts to move.

“Time to go,” Nico sighs. She offers Karolina her hand as she stands, and Karolina lets Nico pull her to her feet and lead her back inside, and this time Nico is the one that keeps their hands connected.

(She thinks about kissing Nico again, that night when she’s curled safely in Nico’s arms. But the moment doesn’t seem right, and now that it’s no longer spur of the moment she can reason about why it’s not a good idea, when she still has such enormous gaps in her memory, so she pushes away the impulse.)

==

Weeks wear on and Karolina finally feels strong enough to be bored by just sitting idly in her room all day. Usually she's with Nico, but Nico’s work for 13 sometimes keeps her preoccupied during the day and Karolina finds herself faced with the prospect of hours to fill and nothing to fill them with.

She hangs out with Chase or Victor on occasion, but Chase spends most of his time in the lab with Xavin, trying to counteract the way the Capitol turned him against Gert, and Victor’s nearly always busy. So with no other prospects she starts leaving her room more, trying to find ways to be of use. There’s no shortage of odd jobs that need doing in 13.

On one such day she finds herself in the laundry room, folding towels with Alex Wilder.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, when she walks in and sees him already there. “Aren’t you normally doing, like, super smart computer stuff?”

He shrugs, tossing a towel onto the neat pile in front of him. “I’m waiting for one of my programs to run and it won’t be done for a few hours, so I figured I’d be more useful here.”

There’s a long silence that Karolina finally breaks.

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually explicitly thanked you for saving me,” she says. “So, uh, thank you.”

“No problem,” Alex says. “Nico couldn’t…”

He trails off.

Karolina waits for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she says, “Nico couldn’t what?”

“Nevermind,” Alex says.

Karolina watches him for a moment, but he just folds another towel and doesn’t look at her.

“What were we?” she finally asks. “Nico and I, I mean. It feels like the harder I try to remember the deeper it gets locked away, but I know there’s something she’s not telling me.”

Alex shakes his head. “I’m sorry, she— I think that’s something you need to ask her for yourself.”

He picks up another towel and Karolina does the same, lost in thought. She doesn’t want to ask Nico until she’s more sure of the answer; doesn’t want to overstep that boundary before Nico is ready.

==

Two months into her rescue, Karolina’s memory is still frustratingly blank, and so when Xavin suggests a reconditioning treatment similar to the ones they’re giving Chase, she jumps at the chance.

She asks Nico to come with her. It’s for Nico’s sake almost as much as her own— she didn’t miss Nico’s worried expression when she agreed to the treatment. She’s not truly nervous herself until she gets to the medical lab, but seeing the sterile equipment under the harsh light makes her breath suddenly seize in her chest.

She stops in the doorway, Nico a step behind her.

“You alright?” Nico asks. “You can still change your mind. You don’t have to do this.”

Karolina wants desperately to say yes, to say _Okay, I don’t want to_ , to listen to every instinct she has that’s telling her to turn around.

But this reaction she’s having— even if she doesn’t remember why, she knows it has to be from the Capitol. And going through with this might be her best chance at getting back at them, her best chance to finally figure out everything she’s lost.

So she forces a reassuring smile onto her face and says, “I’m okay,” and she manages one step and then another into the lab. A technician ushers her over to a chair and Karolina makes herself sit down, gritting her teeth when they take her arm and swab over her vein.

Even Nico entering the room doesn’t make her feel any calmer, but she’s glad Nico is here anyway. It’s a good reminder that she’s not in the Capitol, that she’s safe and with people that know what they’re doing.

Xavin kneels down next to her. “We’re going to try a modified version of what we’ve been doing for Chase,” they say. “Basically, we’re going to give you some morphling and show you footage from your missing time. Since your mind will be in an altered state, we’re hoping it’ll trigger something you lost.”

“Okay,” Karolina manages. She reaches out for Nico’s hand.

“Count of three,” Xavin says, and Karolina does her best to not crush Nico’s fingers when the needle enters her arm, the fingernails of her other hand digging into her palm hard enough to draw blood.

And then the drug is injected, and she loses all awareness of Nico’s hand in hers as well as everything about the environment she’s in. 

_She’s in a very different lab, her body aching with a hundred bruises in different stages of healing, and her head feels like it’s about to split open as a man in a white coat does his best to pull everything about Nico out of her head._

_Karolina does her best to keep her there, and she’s slowing him down, she’s heard him complain about the treatment taking longer than he’d thought, but she’s losing. Day by day, no matter how tightly she holds on, she can feel the one thing keeping her together slipping from her memory._

And then she opens her eyes and she’s back in District 13, heart pounding, curled up in her chair with Xavin on one side and Nico on the other.

The memory is already fading (and Karolina’s not sure she even wants to hold onto it), but the essence stays with her enough that she’s relieved when she looks up and finds Nico’s worried face looking back at her.

“What do you remember?” Xavin asks, and Karolina tears her eyes away from Nico to look at them.

“We were about to start, and then you gave me the morphling, and then I’m not sure. I just remember— fear. I was so scared.”

She feels Nico’s hand cover hers, and Karolina turns her palm up and slides her fingers between Nico’s.

“I think I saw the Capitol, before they took my memories.”

“Good, keep going,” Xavin encourages, and Karolina closes her eyes, forces herself to revisit the pain she just experienced. Most of the details are already gone but there’s one thing she’s sure of.

“It was Nico,” she says finally. “They were trying to make me forget Nico. Because they were hurting me, and it wasn’t working how they wanted it to.”

She turns away from Xavin, because she wants to see Nico’s reaction as she says the next part.

“And it was your fault, because you were— you were my safe place.”

In a split second, any lingering doubts Karolina had about her and Nico’s relationship are wiped away. Nico looks anguished and terrified all at once, and hidden just behind those is another emotion Karolina isn’t quite sure how to describe but that might be yearning, and Karolina hates how much her own pain is hurting Nico but she holds Nico’s hand tighter and makes herself finish talking.

“So they tried to make me think that you were responsible for my pain, to take that away. To take _you_ away. And then they did.”

Xavin asks her more questions but Karolina is barely aware of her own answers, too focused on the warring expressions on Nico’s face. Gradually fear overtakes the others, and instead of acknowledging anything Karolina said Nico pulls her hand from Karolina’s.

“I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“Nico!” Karolina calls, but Nico doesn’t turn around as hurries out of the room and the door swings shut behind her.

Karolina lets her go even as every instinct in her body is screaming to go after her, and she sits quietly as Xavin bandages the injection points in her arm.

“I think that’s all for today, Karolina,” they say.

“Okay,” Karolina says. “Are you going to try again?”

They give her a sad smile. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. At least not soon. Maybe— I would talk to Nico about it. I think that might have more value than anything we can do for you medically.”

Karolina nods and leaves on shaky legs. Nico’s not in Karolina’s room or her own, so Karolina wanders directionless through the rest of the district. She doesn’t find her, but she does run into Chase.

He’s recovered about as well as she has. Though still not as healthy as he was pre-Quarter Quell, he no longer looks like he could keel over at any moment, his cheeks filled out and some of his muscle definition returning.

“Hey, Karolina!” he says brightly.

“Hi,” Karolina responds. She tries to inject the same enthusiasm into her own voice but she must not quite manage because his eyebrows draw together with concern.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes,” Karolina lies, and she barely lasts a second under Chase’s incredulous look before she amends, “no.”

“What’s wrong? Only if you want to talk about it.”

“I just had a morphling treatment,” Karolina manages, and Chase’s eyes immediately soften in understanding.

“Xavin told me you were going to try one. They’re hard, aren’t they?”

Karolina nods.

“It was—” she pauses, not sure how much she wants to ask Chase, how much she even trusts his corrupted memory. But he’s taken the same treatment regularly for weeks and probably understands at least some of her experience, so she continues. “It made me realize— How much do you remember from the last few years?”

“Some. I still have trouble remembering what’s real.”

“Do you know— What do you remember about me and Nico, before all this?”

“Oh,” Chase breathes, and that’s as good as an answer.

“I loved her, didn’t I,” Karolina says. 

Once the words are out she suddenly feels like she might still. But it can’t be _still_ because it feels so new, like she hasn’t retained any of her old feelings and she’s falling in love with Nico all over again anyway, like she’s hardwired to love Nico no matter their circumstances.

“You should talk to her about it,” Chase says. “I talk to Gert, about everything we went through together. It helps me remember that I really do love her, and the hatred I feel sometimes is fake.”

Karolina smiles at him, and this time it feels genuine. “Thanks, Chase.”

She hesitates, because she hasn’t voiced this worry to anyone. But Chase is going through almost the exact same thing as her. If anyone can understand, it’ll be him.

“Do you ever worry that it’ll never come back all the way?”

“All the time,” Chase says. “Like, I wanted to _kill_ Gert. I almost did. Sure, I’m enough in control now that I don’t think I’d act on it anymore, but sometimes I look at her and it’s like I’m looking at a stranger. So yeah, all the time.”

“Oh,” Karolina breathes. “I’m so sorry.” For the first time she’s glad for her memory loss, that the Capitol gouged Nico out of her head but left the memories uncorrupted. Because as slow as it all is to come back, she’s never had to doubt that any of it is real.

Chase shrugs. “It is what it is. Maybe it _will_ never come back fully, and I have to be okay with that. I just do my best to remember that I love Gert, and _that’s_ what’s real, and I can fill the rest in around that.”

Karolina thinks about what it would be like to do the same, to build the lost bits of her identity around the tug in her chest she feels whenever she’s with Nico. But even though she knows objectively that Nico is in all the missing time she’s not sure she can do it. It feels like it would be disingenuous, somehow, like she’d be giving up on what they had.

But then again Chase’s identity was warped in a way hers wasn’t. He’s actively trying to untangle threads, while Karolina is left with nothing. Just a vast expanse of empty time, and nothing to do but sit and hope it returns.

“Hey, don’t worry,” Chase says gently, like he can read the conflict in her face, “It’ll come back. Even on days when I don’t get morphling, everything makes a little more sense than the day before. You’re still remembering stuff, right?”

“Yeah,” Karolina says. “I hope you’re right.”

“Me, too,” Chase says, and the weight of anxiety isn’t gone from Karolina’s shoulders but it feels lighter.

==

Karolina doesn’t see Nico for the rest of the day, but she resolves to finally ask her directly about their relationship when she sees her that night.

But Nico doesn’t show up, and Karolina instead spends the whole night plagued by nightmares almost as bad as those she had during her first few weeks in District 13, before Nico started sharing her bed.

She almost seeks her out the next day, but something holds her back. Nico must have a reason for avoiding her. There must be something about their time together she doesn’t want Karolina to know about.

So for the better part of a week she keeps herself busy, and endures her nightmares alone, and misses the comforting weight of Nico beside her.

By the end of the week, she’s getting fed up. Nico’s presence has been the most consistent thing about her life since she was rescued from the Capitol, and all of a sudden she’s acting like Karolina no longer exists.

Karolina is settling in for the evening, bracing herself for another sleepless night and resolving to go and find Nico in the morning, when there’s a knock at her door.

“Come in,” she calls, sitting up and pulling her knees to her chest, and the door swings open slowly to reveal Nico standing awkwardly behind it.

Karolina’s breath catches, just for a moment, because in their week apart she’d almost forgotten how beautiful Nico is.

She pats the empty side of the bed to cover up her reaction, and Nico crosses the room to sit cross-legged on the indicated spot. Her jaw works like she’s trying to say something but hasn’t yet figured out how, so Karolina takes pity on her and goes first.

She starts with a question she knows the answer to already, but she needs to hear it from Nico.

“We were together, weren’t we. Before.”

“Yeah,” Nico admits.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You can’t tell someone they love you,” Nico says, and Karolina wants to cry at the raw vulnerability on her face. “That’s why— that’s why I ran away. Now that you know— I wasn’t sure if you still wanted me here.”

“Nico,” Karolina says, fighting the sudden, absurd impulse to laugh. All this time she’d been imagining some deep dark secret but no, it just turns out Nico was afraid of overstepping and telling Karolina something she’s basically known for months.

She says, “Of course I want you here,” her voice sure and steady so Nico knows. She takes Nico’s hand and smooths the pad of her thumb across the back of it.

“Okay,” Nico whispers. She turns her hand so their fingers are intertwined, and says, “I’m yours, any way you’ll have me,” and Karolina almost kisses her then and there.

But she reminds herself why she hasn’t already, why it isn’t a good idea when Nico’s feelings run so much deeper than her own (although every day has her questioning that assumption more and more), and so instead she whispers, “Come here,” and lets Nico crawl under the blanket and into her arms.

She curls into Nico’s side and rests her head on Nico’s chest, listening to the thumping of her heart.

“I have feelings for you, I think,” she murmurs quietly into the fabric of Nico’s shirt, and Nico’s heart rate picks up. It stays elevated as Karolina says, “I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the way things are right now, because this feels sort of perfect,” but Nico doesn’t move except to tighten her arm almost imperceptibly around Karolina’s shoulders.

“It’s okay,” Nico says. “Nothing has to change.”

Karolina wonders if Nico can feel how the pace of her own heartbeat has increased to match Nico’s, can feel how conflicted she is.

Maybe she _does_ want things to change.

(Maybe she wants to lean up and press her mouth to Nico’s, wants to bury her hands in Nico’s soft hair until she loses herself in Nico’s warmth.)

“Maybe someday I can be what you need, the way you are for me,” she whispers.

“Maybe someday,” Nico says, and Karolina thinks that maybe _someday_ is now.

==

When Karolina requests to be part of the mission to infiltrate the Capitol, Nico resists.

She doesn’t say it, but the _I can’t lose you again_ is implicit.

But Karolina isn’t even really in recovery anymore, at least not physically. She can exert herself almost to the level that she could before, and she has defined muscle again in her arms and her shoulders and her legs.

(More than once, she’s caught Nico staring distractedly at her exposed shoulders. It’s more than a little flattering.)

Mentally, she’s a little shakier. She’s not as bad as Chase, who’s only allowed to join their mission on the condition that he’s unarmed, but she’s still plagued by nightmares. During the day, she’s started to get occasional random flashes of scenes that feel like they’re out of someone else’s life. Sometimes they’re totally mundane — discussing strategy with other mentors, or wiping a bit of strawberry off of Nico’s cheek — but sometimes they’re from her imprisonment, and those are harder. 

She spends the first few days after this starts to happen constantly on edge, twitching at any sudden movement. At night she avoids sleep, curled up and shivering in the same way she did against the cold floor of her cell as she tries to stay awake, because she can’t even avoid nightmares during the day anymore and they’re a hundred times worse at night. 

But Nico stays by her through it all. She lies next to her and rubs her back and talks for hours about nothing and everything: news from the resistance, a television program she remembers from when she was a kid, her opinion on the tasteless nutrient packets they get instead of food. And gradually she starts sleeping again. But the memories never really go away. Unlike most of her dreams, which generally fade within the first few seconds of consciousness, these stick around. She just has to learn to live with them.

Eventually Karolina gets better at handling the sudden, random insights into her past, and she passes the physicals, and despite Nico’s protests she’s cleared to go.

When she first suggests that Nico help her train, Nico is reluctant. But Karolina is tired of everyone treating her like she’s made of glass, and even if she’s still constantly exhausted from her nightmares she’s desperate to prove herself again. And eventually Nico relents.

But she can tell that Nico is still holding back, afraid of hurting her.

There’s a day when she and Nico are sparring lightly, and one of Nico’s jabs sneaks under Karolina’s guard and hits her in the stomach.

Suddenly she’s not in the training room anymore, and a much heavier fist aiming to hurt significantly more than Nico crushes against her abdomen, the fist’s owner grunting with the effort. Karolina curls in on herself and can taste blood, watches the red line of it drain through the grate in the floor of her Capitol cell.

It’s only a moment before she comes back to herself but in that time she’s sunk down onto the floor, and when Nico puts a hand on her shoulder she throws it off and scrambles away before she even quite knows what she’s doing.

“Sorry,” she gasps when she realizes where she is.

“Are you okay?” Nico asks worriedly, and Karolina nods and reaches out for her. This time when Nico wraps her arms around Karolina she sinks into it.

“I remembered more,” she says, “from the Capitol.”

Nico stiffens, runs her hand soothingly down Karolina’s back.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Karolina shrugs. “It’s nothing that interesting. I just remember them beating me up. And— and there was a grate in the floor of my cell. So they could get rid of the blood.”

“Karolina,” Nico says, and Karolina feels Nico’s nose press against her temple, Nico’s lips on her cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Karolina says softly. “I just remember— it all seemed so _pointless._ Like they asked me questions and hit me when I wouldn’t answer them, but it didn’t even seem like they wanted the answers. Like, they just wanted me to refuse, so they could have an excuse.”

Nico pulls back so she can look Karolina in the eyes. “I’m never going to let that happen to you again, okay? What they did to you—”

She pauses, takes a deep breath. 

“I’m going to _destroy_ them.”

Nico’s eyes are full of a deep hatred Karolina has never seen before, and for the first time Karolina is a little scared of her.

“Hey,” she says. She runs her hand down Nico’s arm and Nico’s face softens ever so slightly. “If you’re just saying that because of me— I don’t want you to do anything you’re going to regret. If I hadn’t been captured—”

“Hey, no, don’t you dare blame yourself,” Nico says, her eyes dark and fierce. “None of this is your fault. And it’s not just you— it’s what happened to Amy, and me, and _hundreds_ of other kids. The people who did it have to pay.”

“How bad was I,” Karolina asks, to distract from the venom in Nico’s tone, “when I got here?”

“It was scary,” Nico whispers, and her eyes aren’t burning anymore. “They said that it— it was a miracle you survived as long as you did.”

Karolina hugs Nico tighter, and Nico puts her hand on the back of Karolina’s neck and presses a kiss to the top of her head, and Nico’s presence is enough to beat back the memory still threatening to overtake her.

==

Their upcoming mission to the Capitol looms large at the forefront of everyone’s minds, but there’s a spark of brightness between here and there.

Molly’s quinceañera is happy and pretty and a chance to forget, just for a night, what lies ahead.

Gert steals the show with a heartfelt speech about getting to watch Molly grow up that leaves them all in tears, but Karolina spends the whole night looking at Nico.

Some ex-Capitol fashion designers have made her a dress stitched with moons and stars, and Karolina thinks that it might be okay to be stuck underground — to not be able to see real stars — as long as she has Nico in front of her.

Karolina wants her so badly.

She might kiss her tonight. Screw waiting for her memory to come back.

Because she’s been holding back based on the idea that Nico feels more than she does, that knowing their shared history makes her feelings run deeper, somehow. But it’s hard to imagine that she’s ever loved Nico more than this.

She spends most of the night dancing with their little group, Chase and Gert and Molly and Victor and Alex and Nico, and it’s late in the evening when it happens.

Nico’s dancing with Gert, and Gert twirls her and Nico laughs as she spins. Her hair catches the glimmer of the string lights above them, and something about the way it reflects looks like moonlight.

It feels like all of Karolina’s internal organs fail at once, her breath coming to a stuttering halt as her lungs give out and a wave of memories crashes over her.

It’s nothing like the flashes she’s been getting for months. Those were barely trickles and this is a flood, memories hitting her like a wave.

She’s still looking at Nico but she’s not really seeing her— at least, not here and now. She’s remembering the way Nico looked on the roof at night over the span of _years_ , illuminated by the lights of the Capitol. She’s remembering holding her hand, and kissing her for the first time. She’s remembering being outed during their interviews, and the way Nico pressed her up against her door later that night, and the warmth of Nico’s skin under her palms. She’s remembering the thrill of getting to be with Nico, _finally_ , and how Nico touched her so so carefully, and the way Nico held her when they were in the arena together and how she cradled Karolina’s face between her hands when she kissed her for what they both thought was the last time. 

And every moment in between.

It’s like there have been two Nicos, in her head: the one she only remembers in flashes, and the one she’s been falling for all over again. But now they’ve merged, and the Nico in front of her is suddenly the same as the girl she remembers.

And it’s almost laughable that she thought she couldn’t love Nico any more than she did, because she’s so in love now that it almost overwhelms her.

(It’s not all good, of course. Everything from her time imprisoned in the Capitol comes back too, the origin of every thin white scar now scattered across her body and the way she clung desperately to memories of Nico as they were methodically siphoned out of her head.

But Nico is here, now, with her, and somehow it almost seems worth it.

And if by some miracle they survive their mission to the Capitol, maybe it will be.)

Nico notices her tense, and she drops Gert’s hand to step closer to Karolina.

“You okay?” she asks over the beat of the music.

Karolina nods and reaches out for Nico because she can’t _not_ touch her, anymore. She feels the delicate bones of Nico’s wrist and the gentle flutter of Nico’s pulse under her fingers and says, “Can you come with me, for a minute?”

She’s not sure where she’s going, or what she’s going to say when she gets there, but she leads Nico over to the side of the hall where the music is quieter, and they sit down facing each other.

Karolina takes a deep breath, and meets Nico’s eyes, and realizes she doesn’t need to say anything at all.

They’ve always been in sync, even when she barely knew who Nico was, and she can tell that Nico knows. Because now that Karolina has years of memories to draw on she can finally identify the expression on Nico’s face, the one she’s been trying so hard to resolve for months. It’s love, pure and deep and simple, and Karolina knows she’s looking at Nico the exact same way.

“I remember,” Karolina says, just to banish the last hint of apprehension from Nico’s eyes. “Nico, I remember everything.”

Nico’s eyes fill with tears and she just sort of falls against Karolina, and Karolina catches her.

(And she resolves in this moment to always be there, to catch Nico every single time.)

She holds Nico tightly, and strokes her hair, and feels her cry against her shoulder.

The music changes, from the uptempo pop that’s been playing for most of the night to something slower, and Karolina says, “Dance with me?”

(She lets her lips brush she shell of Nico’s ear as she pulls away, and revels in the way Nico shivers at her touch.)

Nico takes Karolina’s offered hand and follows her through the throng of people on the dance floor until they find an empty space, and she fits her head in the crook of Karolina’s neck like it belongs there.

Karolina wraps her arms around Nico’s shoulders and kisses her temple, and it hits her suddenly how much they’ve been through. Eight months ago she had a spear in her leg and Nico was kissing her goodbye like they were about to die and now here they are, swaying gently together like there’s no one in the world but the two of them.

“I missed you,” Karolina whispers, because they may have spent the last several months together but it didn’t feel like this.

Nico half-laughs against her skin.

“I missed you too. _Fuck_ , Karrie, I missed you so much.”

Karolina skims her fingertips along the line of Nico’s jaw to tilt her face up, pressing her hand carefully to Nico’s cheek. Nico leans into her, inhaling sharply when their noses brush. She doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with her hands, running them up and down Karolina’s sides a few times before one settles at the small of Karolina’s back and the other curves around her neck.

When Nico leans up, Karolina meets her halfway.

They haven’t kissed in months but Karolina almost cries at how _familiar_ it feels, how right, and Nico’s mouth is soft and gentle and she tastes like the birthday cake they ate earlier and Karolina thinks she could die right now and it would be okay because she got to have this. Neither of them makes any move to deepen the kiss but they don’t need to, because it’s not a declaration of love so much as it is a reminder. It’s long moments before they break apart, and Karolina opens her eyes to see Nico beaming up at her.

Nico kisses her again, quick and fleeting, before she pulls away and tucks her face back against Karolina’s neck, and Karolina kisses the top of Nico’s head and holds her close until the song ends. Once it does Nico backs out of Karolina’s arms, taking her hand to lead her back to their friends, but Karolina stays put. And when Nico turns to look quizzically at her she reels her back in by their joined hands.

She kisses her again, and again, and Nico smiles against her lips.

==

When the party ends Karolina leads Nico back to her room with an air of apprehension. Really it’s been _their_ room since the morphling, since the last secrets between them disappeared. Nico had moved all her belongings in the following week, and Karolina’s pretty sure the spot in her old room has been filled and Nico couldn’t go back even if she wanted to.

But now things are _awkward,_ and the two of them change in silence without looking at each other, and Karolina’s not sure what’s supposed to happen now. She knows what she would _like_ to happen, but how do you go forward after suddenly remembering how much you love the girl you were kind of already in love with anyway?

Karolina climbs into bed and looks across the room to see Nico standing there frozen, as if even after all this time she’s unsure if she’s allowed to share Karolina’s space.

As if she doesn’t know by now that’s she’s all Karolina has ever wanted or could ever want.

“Nico,” Karolina whispers, and she might not have known what to say when she opened her mouth but the “come to bed” that falls from her lips feels like the most natural thing in the world. And Nico does, finally, slipping under the covers and shifting forward until Karolina can feel Nico’s breath on her cheek.

Again they’re frozen in place, not sure how to reconcile the familiarity of being together with the way it still feels brand-new.

This time Nico is the one to break the tension, moving her hand to tuck a lock of hair behind Karolina’s ear and leaving her thumb tracing carefully along Karolina’s cheekbone. When she whispers, “I’m scared,” it’s suddenly easy for Karolina to move, too, to rest her hand on Nico’s hip and let it slide around to the small of her back.

“I don’t think I can handle losing you again,” Nico says, and Karolina presses the length of her body against Nico’s.

“Hey,” she says. “I love you, okay? And I’ll always come back to you. Everything’s going to be alright, I promise.”

And for the first time it feels like a promise she’s going to be able to keep, and when Nico says “I love you too” Karolina smiles wide and happy, and kisses her.

It feels different than the quick, chaste ones they shared at the party. There’s an urgency thrumming through Karolina’s bones that wasn’t there before, and as Nico’s lips part Karolina kisses her harder and her tongue darts into Nico’s mouth, once and then again.

Nico pulls away a fraction to breathe, long and shuddering against Karolina’s lips, and then she buries her hand in Karolina’s short hair and kisses her again. Her nails scratch against Karolina’s scalp at the same time that she catches Karolina’s lower lip between her teeth and Karolina feels an answering jolt between her legs. She pulls Nico even closer so she can roll above her.

She presses wet, open-mouthed kisses down Nico’s neck and Nico groans low and quiet, her hand fisted in Karolina’s hair. And when Karolina bites at the skin of her throat hard enough to elicit a gasp Nico drags Karolina’s face back up to her own, cupping Karolina’s jaw with her free hand to pull her down for a kiss, messy and desperate enough that their teeth clack together.

Karolina licks into her mouth, and her hand slips under Nico’s shirt and wanders up her side, her fingers spanning Nico’s rib cage, and her thigh presses between Nico’s legs. Nico’s hips roll up against hers and Karolina swallows the noise she makes, and then Nico is pressing her back with a hand on her collarbone, urging her up. Karolina straddles Nico’s thigh as Nico sits up beneath her enough to pull her shirt over her head, and Karolina is so distracted by the fact that Nico isn’t wearing a bra that it’s a second before she notices Nico’s fingers on her stomach, under the hem of her shirt.

Nico looks up at her with questioning eyes, and Karolina nods and strips her own shirt off before she leans down to kiss Nico again. Her hands roam down Nico’s bare back and Nico arches against her. 

All too soon they’re horizontal again but this time it’s better, closer, skin on skin, and Karolina braces her weight on one elbow so she can trail her other hand down across Nico’s chest and over her stomach.

She pauses at Nico’s waistband.

“We can stop.” It comes out like a question.

Nico looks up at her and _god,_ she’s beautiful like this, pupils dilated and cheeks flushed. “I don’t want to stop.”

“Me, neither,” Karolina says, smiling softly down at her. “Is this okay, then?”

She runs her fingers across Nico’s stomach just above her waistband and Nico shivers.

“God, yes,” she breathes, her voice cracking. “Karrie, _please._ ”

It’s everything and nothing like their first time. Because there’s still an element of the careful reverence that comes with newness, gentle wandering hands and _is this okay?_ and _how about this?_ and slow builds that leave them gasping into each others’ mouths.

But it’s different because it’s _not_ their first time, they’re following steps they’ve danced before, and it’s been less than a year since then but Karolina feels like they’ve both aged ten. And they start to remember the rhythm they’d found the last time, know exactly how to wind each other up, and once Nico has pressed Karolina onto her back she kisses down her body with an aching slowness and Karolina almost cries with relief when Nico finally touches her.

She falls apart under Nico’s fingers and Nico’s tongue, and afterwards Nico grins against her mouth and tucks her head against Karolina’s shoulder and lets Karolina tangle their limbs together, and it feels like the missing pieces of Karolina’s life have finally slotted into place. 

Like this is how it should be. 

==

Karolina wakes up before Nico the next morning and spends some time just tracing Nico’s face with her eyes and marveling at how lucky she is, that this incredible girl is _hers_.

(Always, finally, forever.)

When Nico stirs Karolina kisses her, murmurs, “Good morning,” into her mouth. She pulls away, but she keeps staring.

“What?” Nico says.

“You’re so pretty.”

Nico scrunches her nose up, and Karolina puts her thumb on the wrinkle of skin at the bridge until it relaxes. She replaces her thumb with her lips, kissing from Nico’s nose across her cheek and down to the corner of her jaw, and by the time she gets back around to Nico’s mouth Nico is so impatient that she fists her hand in Karolina’s hair to guide their lips together.

Later, when they’re lying in the afterglow, (and they’re already late to training so what’s a few more minutes), Karolina says, “Thanks for waiting for me.”

Nico’s eyes are wide, and she doesn’t say anything so Karolina keeps talking. “Even when you thought I was dead. You didn’t have to, you know.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Nico says, her tone disbelieving. “As if there was ever any other option. As if I could ever move on from you.”

“You’re sweet.”

“I’m serious,” Nico says. Her hand skims down Karolina’s arm and she tangles her fingers with Karolina’s, brings them to her lips.

Growing up, Karolina never thought she’d have so much as a weak facsimile of what she does now with Nico. Her mom was so controlling, and the threat of the Capitol was so ever-present and omniscient, that it was inconceivable.

So she says “I love you,” now, even though it doesn’t seem like enough, because her heart feels like it’s about to burst out of her chest. But Nico squeezes her fingers and Karolina knows she understands.

==

The night before they’re meant to leave for the Capitol feels eerily like the eve of the Quarter Quell. The future is uncertain and deadly, and all Karolina can do is hold Nico tightly while she still can and hope against hope that they’ll make it out the other side.

Nico moves an errant curl out of Karolina’s eyes and leaves her hand there, the pads of her fingers brushing lightly at the sensitive skin behind Karolina’s ear. Her lips are red and kiss-swollen, and tomorrow feels like worlds away.

“When I was in the Capitol,” Karolina whispers, and Nico’s brow furrows, like it always does when Karolina brings up her time in captivity.

Karolina continues, “the man wiping my memories said something like ‘you think if you can just hold onto your relationship everything will be alright, but we own you no matter what.’ But he was wrong, wasn’t he? The whole point of them taking you away was that they knew they couldn’t get to me, as long as I had you.”

“Fuck, Karrie,” Nico says, her voice hoarse.

“And I have you again, so maybe it’ll turn out alright, now.”

Nico closes her eyes, her hand curling into Karolina’s hair.

“I’m so in love with you. You have no idea.”

“I might,” Karolina says. “I’m so in love with you too, you know.”

She leans in at the same time Nico does, and they’ve spent so much time relearning each other over the past week that she knows exactly how to tilt her head so their mouths fit together in just the right way, so that her breath catches and her toes curl. Nico breaks the kiss and Karolina chases her lips, pulls her back in again and again, until Nico finally manages to pull away enough to speak.

Her eyes are dark and serious, and she says, “Marry me.”

“What?” Karolina says, even though she’d heard her perfectly, because she needs a second or she’s going to start crying.

“When all this is over. Marry me.”

Trying to compose herself was a waste of effort, because Karolina starts crying anyway.

“Okay,” she whispers.

“Yeah?” Nico says, and she smiles wide and brilliant even as her own eyes fill with tears.

“Yes,” Karolina says. She cups Nico’s jaw, rests their foreheads together. “You’re it for me, you know. Of course I will.”

“Great,” Nico says, and it’s half-laugh, half-sob, and Karolina wraps Nico tighter in her arms and doesn’t let go.

==

Karolina knew that fighting their way through the Capitol would be hard, but nothing could have quite prepared her for this. She’d likened it to the Hunger Games, in her head, but there you knew there were spectators watching you all the time, and here everything hinges on them going undetected.

And the stakes are higher, now. It’s not just her own life on the line.

Their second night, they take refuge in an abandoned building. None of them are seriously injured, but they’ve all picked up an assortment of cuts and burns from fighting their way through the myriad of traps the Capitol has set for them, and they need shelter to nurse their wounds and wait for morning.

As the adrenaline starts to wear off everyone falls asleep; Molly first, though she’s soon followed by the rest, until it’s just Karolina and Nico, staying up to keep watch.

Nico shifts closer to Karolina where they’re sitting on the floor until they’re pressed together, thigh to hip and elbow to shoulder. She takes Karolina’s hand and leans her head on Karolina’s shoulder and Karolina sighs, letting her head rest on top of Nico’s.

“Where do you want to go,” Nico whispers, “if we make it out of here?”

 _Anywhere, as long as it’s with you,_ Karolina thinks.

But she knows what Nico needs right now — what they both need right now — is a concrete idea. Something to work towards, to stay alive for.

So what she says is, “I think I want to go back to District 4, where the ocean is. I always loved the idea of the water as a kid, but I spent my whole life training. I never got to enjoy it.”

“The ocean sounds great,” Nico says. She hesitates. “I mean, only if you want me to go with you. I don’t want to assume.”

Karolina huffs out a quiet laugh.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, love.”

Something in Nico’s face changes at the name.

“Sorry,” Karolina says quickly. “Is it okay if I call you that?”

“It’s perfect,” Nico says.

And they’re supposed to be on watch, but Karolina doesn’t resist when Nico grips her chin and pulls her mouth down.

==

**_epilogue (never)_ **

Finally, it’s all over.

Not just their desperate fight through the Capitol, but the long, exhausting months that followed. Karolina, Nico, and the rest of their team spent most of that time sitting in meeting rooms, occasionally offering suggestions but mostly just listening to 13’s leaders argue about what to do next.

Karolina found it almost more stressful than the fight itself. There at least they had a goal, and a timeline; here, everything was couched in a measure of bureaucracy, like no one even knew what the end result should be.

Sometimes it was all Karolina could do to not scream, and the only thing keeping her grounded was the way Nico’s thumb would slide periodically across her knuckles under the table. Nico always looked as tired as Karolina felt, but Karolina would glance sideways at her and Nico would offer her the barest hint of a smile, and Karolina’s irritation at how _long_ everything was taking would be replaced with relief that she even got to be here with Nico at all.

At night, they would take refuge in the tiny room in the president’s mansion they'd commandeered for themselves, lie wrapped in each other and talk about what they were going to do, once they made it to District 4. 

(Or they'd climb up to the roof, and look out at what remained of the Capitol, and marvel at how far they'd come. 

If she squinted, Karolina could make out the smoldering remains of the tribute building peeking out from behind a skyscraper, but she tried not to look too much.)

Now, they've put all that behind them, and they're finally in 4. 

It’s the morning after they arrive— the night before, they’d been too exhausted from the hours on the airship and the emotional weight of leaving the Capitol behind for the last time to do anything but collapse into bed. 

But this morning it’s bright and sunny and after breakfast Karolina takes Nico’s hand and leads her down to the ocean.

They get to the base of the pier and Karolina stops, dropping Nico’s hand.

“Race you!”

“Karolina, you’re still wearing—” Nico begins, but Karolina has already taken off, kicking off her shoes as she runs, and she cannonballs off the end of the pier into the clear blue water below.

She wipes the water out of her face as she comes up for air, only to be immediately blinded again with the splash of Nico diving in after her.

Karolina fights against the drag of her waterlogged clothes to swim over to where Nico surfaced.

“I win.”

“You cheated,” Nico protests.

“Did not,” Karolina says.

“Did too,” Nico says, and Karolina splutters around a sudden mouthful of water from the splash Nico sends her way.

She blinks the water out of her eyes to find Nico laughing at her, and it’s not even particularly funny but Karolina finds herself laughing too, with her whole body in a way she hasn’t done in months.

She splashes back at Nico, and Nico tackles her under the water, and it finally feels like everything is going to be okay.

==

  
  


Everything isn’t magically perfect, of course. They’ve been through too much to get anything that resembles a storybook happy ending, marked by their time as tributes in a way that Karolina knows deep down is never going to go away. Even though her nightmares come less and less often as the months wear on, they never fade entirely. 

There’s one night where she wakes up sobbing and she’s in Nico’s arms in an instant, her body shaking uncontrollably. 

“Hey,” Nico whispers, stroking her hair, “hey, it’s okay, you’re okay.”

Karolina heaves in a breath, her face buried in Nico’s shoulder. 

“Same one?” Nico asks, and Karolina nods. It’s the same nightmare as always, a gleaming white lab and a dispassionate scientist more interested in a hypothetical treatment than the human beings it affects.

“It’s over,” Nico murmurs, “okay? You’re safe.”

She keeps it up, a constant stream of soothing words as she holds Karolina tightly to her chest, and Karolina lets it wash over her until her pulse slows and she’s lulled back to sleep by the steady thump of Nico’s heartbeat.

==

They’ve been in District 4 for over a year before Karolina works up the courage to ask, “Remember how you asked me to marry you?”

It’s a warm spring day and they’re sprawled out in the shade of a tall pine tree at the edge of the district, side by side with their shoulders pressed together and their hands tangled between them.

Nico props herself up on an elbow, looking down at Karolina. “Yeah,” she says softly.

Karolina sits up. “Did you mean it?”

Nico’s second “Yeah,” is even softer.

Karolina reaches into her pocket and pulls out the ring that she’d spent hours choosing _weeks_ ago, dark grey with a row of tiny rainbow stones set into the band.

She rises to one knee, but she can’t manage to get the words out before Nico extracts a ring from her own pocket, scrambling up onto a knee in a position to mirror Karolina. Karolina launches herself forward to wrap Nico in a hug, feels Nico’s breath shaky against the side of her neck.

“Is that a yes, then?” Karolina giggles.

“I asked you first, remember?” Nico says, and she rolls her eyes but doesn’t try to hide the affection playing at the corners of her mouth.

It feels so natural, to put a ring on Nico’s finger and to let Nico slide one onto her own.

And then they’re kissing, long and deep and full of kept promises, and the metal of Nico’s ring is cool against Karolina’s cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it’s the End, y’all! this is the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written, but I think it turned out okay. thanks for waiting through longer than I originally said for this chapter to go up, I was trying to finish s3 first and it took longer than anticipated. I hope it’s worth it!
> 
> thx jordan and bella for giving me plot direction and yelling at me about this chapter
> 
> as always, lmk your thoughts here or stop over on tumblr dot com @lyrikaokano to yell about season 3

**Author's Note:**

> I Know there's no tension in putting a chapter break here anymore but it got too long so here we are!! I'm still editing the second chapter but hopefully I'll be able to get it up soon as a form of escapism from s3 :)
> 
> lmk what you think and then come yell at me on tumblr @lyrikaokano


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